I think that kind of experience can come because of different causes. I read a similar article regarding some “mystical experiences” in Newsweek around 10 years ago.
To be aware of yourself and experience those things just before a stroke it is really “bad luck”.

Now I think that Zen experience is much more than this kind of sensation, although you can experience something similar from time to time.

I think that these experiences are only byproducts of our practice.

Looking for them would be just as doing excercise for the sake of getting some sweat.

Suzuki Roshi mentioned this and reccomended to better take a drug if you are practicing zen just for getting those expericies.

Zen encompasses our whole life and, of course, it helps to physically configurate our brain by establishing a pattern of neuron connections. But our “normal” habits can also help wiring our brain: reading and solving puzzles help doing it.

I think that what practice does is just to give us some equilibrium regarding the use of both brain hemispheres.

Ulises

I’m very fond of science in general and neuroscience in particular, so to say that I’m thrilled about the research that has been carried out over the past few decades would be an understatement.

Having said that, I also think that all the attention meditation has been getting from science is certain to bring about the ever-present problem of reductionism. Reducing peak experiences to neuronal activity (or mind to brain, or love to neurotransmitters, for that matter), as common as it is, would simply be categorical mistake.

As Aristotle (memory serving) first pointed out, there are many categories of knowledge from which one can describe a phenomenon, each description can only be validated within its own category, and a category cannot be reduced to another. For instance, if I take my girlfriend’s hand and say, “This is my girlfriend’s hand,” that is correct; and if I say, “This is the terminal segment of a human’s superior limb,” that is correct too.

The first statement is true as a phenomenological, first person description; the second one is true as an objective, third person description. They say different things, but they say it from different categories, so they can be (and are) equally correct. I can’t reduce one to the other, and if I take one category and claim that it is “more real” or “truer” than another, from the point of view of reason that’s just personal preference talking.

So I don’t think we should be disheartened by science’s findings or cold rationality–because it’s rationality itself that points out that reducing things this way would be a mistake.

Anyway, just my 5 cents.

Best wishes from a rather irregular Zen student,

Tomas

PS - I think you woud really like James H. Austin’s Zen and the Brain.
PPS - Your blog is really wonderful!

My views on meditation come from a practical viewpoint. Therefore, I certainly don’t mind, and actually appreciate scientific views of meditation. Meditation has been the subject of scientific study for some time … and the positive results of meditation are being proven. Summarizing in two points.

1. Meditation has a measurable impact on your physiology (true)
2. For MANY people, meditation has a noticeable impact on your mental abilities, emotions, creativity, and general mentality due in part to the changes in physiology

Since 1 is true, we know that 2 is true. The real interesting area is not the physiological impact (1 above), but rather what benefits can come from the mental exercises that are developed in your mind through meditation (2 above … or as Ulises calls it, “the mystical experiences”). While some physiological events may create meditation like experiences, the end results are not the same.

The journey may follow the same path, but the destination may be different.

This was a fascinating post. I love reading scientific validation of my own spiritual experiences. It neither diminishes their value nor negates it.

Regular meditation has retrained my brain of some obvious things like clearer thought, better focus, more peace, calm, kindness, compassion, etc. It makes good sense that occurs because meditation makes real and measurable changes on my brain chemistry.

And I wonder how Dr. Taylor’s relationships changed as a result the personality changes I’m sure she had as a result of her stroke and recovery.

I’d reverse the question and ask, are scientists having a mystical experience?

Of rme personally, it has never mattered what the physical phenomena associated to our “supernatural” experiences are. A skeptic will say they are the cause of it, but I think they are but a pale shadow, a reflection.

I don’t see that the research confirms the VALUE of meditation, rather that it confirms the experience that the meditator has ie its like Tomas says, its another way of experiencing the results of meditation, it comes at it from a different mode of perception.

There is only reductionism if these particular scientific findings are taken alone, if the blips on the scanner are seen as all there is to say about the meditation experience.

For me they add to my knowledge of the experience but they don’t change the experience itself (unless I make a judgement about what this knowledge means in relation to my experience).

In response to what Mike says about the interesting area for him not being the physiological impact but the mental one - I too find that the mental impact is real and insightful, but for me the physiological impact is just as real, if not more so at my current stage of practice. I’m not aware of how the particular physiological impacts described above affect my practice, my life, but the physiological grounding and settling of my body into itself that occurs in meditation feels like the ground on which my mind too can find the spaciousness to let go and settle.

In a way the meditation experience IS just a blip like that blip on a scanner - a reduction, for although in the moment of experience it is all that is, in a millisecond it has changed and the universe changes with it. That experience is so large in itself, yet so small, so full yet so MT - it is a blip and yet it is not..

I think this comes down to an ancient problem ‘heart vs ratio’. Thomas has got a point, I think, in saying more ore less that the framework decides the perception. You could ask yourself here if a phenomenon excists and is experienced at all without jailing it. I remember being an art student when a friend of mine, who studied philosophy, took me to a lecture of his professor about art. I had the feeling my experience of art being cut to pieces. Also I remember my late father, who was a police detective sergeant. He never liked to look at detective series on tv, saying they had nothing to do whatever with reality.
Meditation doesn’t seem to me to be a set of tools to get to know reality. Science on the contrary does. Science uses all the tools it can get, while meditation gets rid of them all.
Yet it is very fascinating to see what science is doing with meditation. I very much appreciate work of philosophers like Daniel Dennett about conciousness.
To me we need both hands, science as well as meditation. It is our human condition and adventure to get to know as much as we can from not knowing.
It is the fate of art to end op as illustration for philosophers and psychologists. I do not know what the fate of meditation is.

This has been an excellent discussion–reductionism thoroughly nailed and valuable perspectives from each contributor, building on a fine chapter of Mary’s blog.

After more than 50 years of puzzling about the nature of identity I think the truth is that the universe has just one identity, which is vast and (of course) all-inclusive, and that our minds are able to filter in only a little of it. We’re like bottom-feeding fish, using what equipment we have.

As this world floods in we defensively sort everything into ’self’ and ‘other.’ Mystical experience tells us that this division is only artificial–quieten the left side of the brain and the right side sees the truth of boundlessness.

Whether this truth of ‘boundless self’ or ’single vast identity’ is laid open by the onset of a stroke or epileptic seizure, by psychedelic drugs or by meditative discipline is not so important in terms of its validity.

It is moving to read Dr Jill Bolte Taylor’s words: “I remember thinking, ‘There is no way that I can squeeze the enormousness of myself back inside my tiny body.’” That it was the onset of a stroke that for her shut down the illusion of separate self doesn’t invalidate the discovery.

However people come to the experience, they know there is nowhere to put the vastness of who we really are. As the Daoist sage Zhuangzi said to a fisherman whose boat was stolen, “Your only solution is to hide the whole universe inside the whole universe.”

While it’s not so important how we come to the experience, it surely matters what we do with it afterwards. How can we integrate such a momentous discovery without some development of human culture that affirms it, clarifies it, shares its significance with others and relates it to living ethically?

Enter Buddhism!

@ Mary
Oops, words! ” … when stripped of all ideas of who or what we might be.” That’s exactely what I mean. When stripped of all tools, naked reality is left. But than, what to do, what to tell. For that I need tools again.

I find it interesting yet not a surprise that someone having a stroke could experience vast oneness. It is reassuring re reflecting on my death that the shutting down of our brain functioning might lead to this!

Whether this or the scientific research confirms the value of meditation I cannot answer - the research studies the effect of meditation on brain activity, the value of the effect is a question the “effect facts” themselves cannot answer. I question myself a lot and that includes questioning the value of my meditation practice. I suppose I trust my intuition on the value of my meditation practice, which includes my subjective value judgement that I have more joy, more connectedness, less fear, am more awake to my life and have more awareness of vastness in every moment, but I have become less of a convinced convert that knows my meditation practice is good - in the end meditation is simply something I do.

I feel heartened by the confirmation given by the stroke experience that meditation or Buddhism doesn’t own vastness, and how could it? It concerns me however in my experience of Zen Buddhism the emphasis given to seeking and achieving “mystical experiences”. Some of the emphasis is subtle, and it leads to notions of “enlightenment” and “enlightened people” (hopefully the teacher) - an enlightened person being in my past assumptions someone permanently having a “mystical experience”. And while Zen also emphasizes “drawing water and chopping wood”, the central platform for Zen training is sesshin (intensive retreats) and the emphasized method in our Diamond Sangha Zen tradition is koan study, both of which put “mystical experience” at center stage. Why does this bother me? On the one hand I do value sesshin and koans and teachers, due to my experiences of connectedness and love and vastness through them. On the other hand there is an unreality in it in seeking something special and making certain people - teachers - into something special, and this is supported by the whole religious tradition and structure and the unwritten group culture.

Perhaps the strongest reason why I keep meditating is because it gives access for me to awareness that it is all a “mystical experience”, that the most ordinary is vast and unknowable. I brush my teeth and when I listen fully, the ordinary sound of it contains the vastness of the entire universe and is also the precise sound only of brushing my teeth, nothing else, the taste of the tooth paste contains the vastness of the entire universe and yet is precisely the taste of toothpaste, the feel of the brush on my gums and teeth contains the vastness of the entire universe and is precisely the sensation of brush on gums and teeth. I experience brushing my teeth like this when I listen to it meditatively. Mostly I just brush my teeth without noticing so deeply.

My thanks and respect to scientists studying scans of brain activity and increasing the vast body of human knowledge. Yet human knowledge while vast, when compared to the unknowable vastness of this/us is like a single grain of sand to all the grains of sand on Earth. May the diligent and labouring scientists on the frontiers of our knowledge also hear, taste and feel the brushing of their teeth.

Hi David

I found your comment very interesting. Zen experience spans the breadth of vastness and closeness; the entire universe wrapped up in the act of brushing our teeth.

I recognise the desire we have, as humans, to give a ‘higher calling’ to the most basic of tasks. I think that we all want our lives to have “purpose”.

I think when we are truly enlightened then we recognise it all as ‘nothing special’. Charlotte Joko Beck has some wonderful writings on the ordinariness of life.

I have also been thinking about power and influence within zen. As a group I think we have to continue to examine what we are doing and see if it is right for us or not. Some of the traditions and rituals we have are not “special”. Some have been developed to meet very practical needs - such as kinhin to keep the blood flowing to our legs and ease cramps and pain. Some are derived from strong cultural practices / values of the day. I have been thinking about the place of the “stick” in sesshin. I personally see little value in it, and in our current cultural environment in NZ where we are trying to reduce child abuse and we have recently outlawed “smacking” - then I think the use of the stick is inappropriate.

You mentioned koan study and the emphasis on the “mystical”. I guess my experience of koan study is a bit different as much of my experience with koans has been one of frustration, leading to a better understanding of myself - how I think, how I operate, how I separate myself.

I have had to rush this comment but would really love to explore this issue further.

deb

Is it a ‘mystical’ experience to stop and really see what is going on in each moment? You can call it mystical if you wish, but you could also call it experiencing our ordinary life at a deeper level or with deeper awareness than usual. Our lives are usually such a blur of work, chores, children, family problems, bills etc. Any gaps we get in the day we tend to fill with movies, TV, music, reading etc. When I meditate during the day at home, often I am interrupted by my children or some problem arises that needs my attention. Certainly I am aware that there are many things needing my attention when I finish meditating.

For me, Sesshin or retreats represent a few precious days when I can truly stop and get off the merry-go-round of life and go very deeply into each moment. I can only do this because I know I won’t be answering the phone, having to socialise, mediate in disputes, deal with children, go to work and work on my relationships. Although experiences happen at Sesshin that could be called mystical, I think the far more tangible reality of Sesshin for most people is a time to stop the constant, unending blur of life and delve deeply into the moment without all those distractions. It can be so difficult to even to get a glimpse of vastness and peace in the hectic blur of life, especially when we are starting our practice. Sesshin can allow us to bring the sense of settledness and peace we get from this time away back into our ordinary lives. It can have a profound effect on the way we go on to deal with our lives and problems.

For me and I’m sure many others in zen, much of this would not be possible without a teacher. Their compassion, commitment, patience and aspiration keep the way open for those that follow. In a way how could you say that teachers who have devoted so much to the way and to those who follow are not special. After all how many of us have given so much? I remember the first time I ever met a zen teacher. I had been reading zen books for many years and was right into the ’special’ qualities zen teachers must have. I almost expected the teacher to walk a few inches off the ground! The reality was so different! I had to ask a member of our group which one the teacher was. There was absolutley nothing special about the way they acted or their demeanor towards others. Totally ordinary is the only way I can describe the way they were. I was totally surprised by this discovery. I think it is easy to see the structure of zen as putting the teacher above everyone else. But I see this as just a structure. I think how we view this has a lot to do with where we come from. Some will find this uncomfortable, others perhaps as special and still others as just a way that can inspire and give confidence in the practice. Certainly in my experience, teachers view themselves as very ordinary people but we cannot deny that their experience of the way can have hugely positive impacts on many peoples lives.

I’ve been recommending “My Stroke of Insight” to everyone I know. It’s the best book I’ve read all year! You can get Jill’s book from Amazon for a good discount.
Here’s the link:
Amazon!

I’ve been recommending “My Stroke of Insight” to everyone I know. It’s the best book I’ve read all year! You can get Jill’s book from Amazon for a good discount.
Here’s the link:
Amazon!

I read “My Stroke of Insight” in one sitting - I couldn’t put it down. I laughed. I cried. It was a fantastic book (I heard it’s a NYTimes Bestseller and I can see why!), but I also think it will be the start of a new, transformative Movement! No one wants to have a stroke as Jill Bolte Taylor did, but her experience can teach us all how to live better lives. Her TED.com speech was one of the most incredibly moving, stimulating, wonderful videos I’ve ever seen. Her Oprah Soul Series interviews were fascinating. They should make a movie of her life so everyone sees it. This is the Real Deal and gives me hope for humanity.

The New York Times Sunday Newspaper on May 25 had a great two page article on Jill Bolte Taylor and her book, “MY STROKE OF INSIGHT”. Her book is a must read and this NY Times article - called “A Superhighway to bliss” is worth checking out too.

Mary,
Here’s my belief:

Just because mystical experiences can be created by electrical blips doesn’t mean that there can’t be a transcendental phenomenon that produces it also.

Perhaps the electronic blips merely makes us more receptive to experiencing the mystical.