Reddit mentions of The Best Buddhist Writing 2006

This passage soured my view of him a bit. It read just similar to other interactions of science and religion.

From Best Buddhist Writing 2006, a couple paragraphs from an article by the Dalai Lama, talking about a conversation with "eminent neuroscientists at an American medical school".

>I said to one of the scientists: "It seems very evident that due to changes in the chemical processes of the brain, many of our subjective experiences like perception and sensation occur. Can one envision the reversal of this casual process? Can one postulate that pure thought itself could affect a change in chemical processes of the brain? I was asking whether, conceptually at least, we could allow the possibility of both upward and downward causation

>The scientist's response was quite surprising. he said that since all mental states arise from physical states, it is not possible for downward causation to occur. Although, out of politeness at the time, I thought then and still think that there is as yet no scientific basis for such a categorical claim. The view that all mental processes are necessarily physical processes is a metaphysical assumption, not a scientific fact. I feel that, in the spirit of scientific inquiry, it is critical that we allow the question to remain open, and not conflate our assumptions with empirical fact.