Cosmology and Consciousness Conference - Day 2

I started Day 2 of the conference on the sidelines, listening to presentions from Karma Thupten about language and cultural differences between western science and Buddhist philosophy and from Dr. Gaelle Desbordes who spoke about her work investigating how the brain changes after various forms of meditation.  Dr. Rajesh Kasturirangan also spoke about the possibility of using the first person perspective to investigate rather then the traditional western science third person perspective to study consciousness.  After lunch Geshe Lhakdor spoke about expanding the senses and graduate student Nishant Seth spoke about his work converting brain signals to music.

During a tea break, I sat with Dr. Sonam Dolma and asked her for advice about Tibetan medicinal herbs and plants that I could use in my Sowing the Seeds of Neuroscience program.  She advised me that several Tibetan medical herbs are usually used in combination and rarely is a single plant used to treat disease.  Nevertheless, she kind enough to shared with me several herbs that might work.

I joined a panel discussion with Rajesh and Nishant where the monks posed some difficult questions about the western scientific perspective on consciousness and the mind.  I found myself saying things like "I don't know" and "We do not yet have the tools" several times.  In my  opinion, this is a honest answer; one I hope the Tibetan monastics will understand.