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The Origins of Life at a Bhuddist Monastery in Bhutan
Pier Luigi Luisi
Roma 3 University, Rome
There are certain invitations in life that a scientist cannot decline. This is how it was with the invitation sent to me by Matthieu Ricard, one of the most well-knownDalai Lama’s interpreters and student, when I was invited to teach a series of biology classes in Bhutan for three weeks during September 2012 at Sissina, a Buddhist monastery for nuns.
Regarding Bhutan, I knew what everyone knows: it is a state of a monarchial regime, comparable in size to Sicily, situated on flanks of the Himalayas and south of Tibet. It is Buddhist in the most traditional way imaginable and one of the few names in the world that still evokes a sense of mystery and attraction among travelers. I had read that the people of Bhutan speak Dzongkha, similar to Tibetan, and use the phrase Tashi Delek as a greeting, the equivalent of our “salve”.
I was invited to the event as a member of the Institute of Mind And Life. The institute, where the Dalai Lama is the spiritus rectus, was founded by the neurobiologist Francisco Varela, and an American business man, Adam Engle. The purpose was to establish a dialogue between classic Western science and Buddhism; specifically, they wanted to focus on the mind and conscience. Buddishm has already investigated the mind and conscience for two thousand years, unlike Western science, which has only approached these subjects recently. However, due to the Dalai Lama’s undying curiosity for science in general, the annual conferences – which are held in Dharamsala, the Dalai Lama’s location in exile in Northern India – rapidly spread to quantic physics, cosmology, biology, psychology. Also, the conceptual and epistemic aspects of these disciplines were brought to light and compared with philosophy and the fundamentals of Buddhism.Obviously this is part of a larger context, i.e., the interplay between science and spirituality. Many would agree that science and spirituality are the two main driving forces of our civilization since immemorial time. In a sense, they could be considered the expressions of the two cultures: science with its pragmatic arm of technology, and spirituality with its institutionalized arm of religion. This statement could be conveniently accompanied by a conciliatory corollary, which says that science without spirituality may bring us to an ‘arid disaster’ through the unchallenged domination of technology, while spirituality alone would nail us down to a non-realistic life form. Clearly, the compromise and harmony between the two major driving forces should be the prerequisite for the healthy progress of knowledge. And there are nowadays hopeful signs that go in this direction, as more people are becoming aware of this necessity.
For all these reasons, and maybe others, in all the years at Dharamsala, there has always been a fantastic panel of scientists, who can be read about at For these scientists, the conferences in Dharamsala often represent their initial interaction with Buddhism. And, similar to myself, many of them have kept their association with Buddhism since then. The door, as my case, was the set of ancient 2,000 year-old principal philosophies, which were particularly pertinent to modern science. In the first place, the principle of conditioned co-production’s causality, (co-dependent Arising) for which everything is determined and conditioned by a thousand other things, and nothing exists that has its own intrinsic autonomy. Anatta is the idea of non-existence of the self as a separate, unitary entity. In their words, there is this, because there is that. There is not this, because there is not that. The Buddhist teaching insists irrefutably on this universal relatedness. And together with Anatta, there is also what they call Anicca, impermanence, which states thatthere is not a single phenomenon in the universe which is not transitory. Everything that is born is bound to perish. The lack of substantiality, of anything that has intrinsic autonomy, leads to the concept of emptiness (not to be confused with nothingness). One looks for something with a validity of inherent existence, and finds emptiness. In Buddhist terms, “emptiness” refers to the lack of intrinsic existence of phenomena. This also means that there is no initial cause, or a God and the creation of ex nihilo. The interdependence of many relative causes is a concept that modern science accepts as part of the systemic vision, where in fact, reality is a network of dependencies. Here what counts are the relations of causality more than the things in themselves.
The Sissina Monastery near Thimpu in Bhutan.
It would be interesting to talk more about the Mind and Life’ Institute, but we have to go back to Bhutan instead.
I flew from Bangkok to Paro, the only airport in Bhutan, a small city of 40,000 people (the total population of the state is 700,000). It is big like Thimphu, the capital, which is roughly one hour from Paro by car.
There was no one present to welcome me at the airport. Knowing the Tibetan monks though, this did not surprise me. With a little luck, I managed to find a car and to reach the Sishina monastery, pictured here in the first photo. The monastery is home to 90 nuns, specifically of Tibetan Buddhism, ranging from 13 to 60 years old.
The same evening I was introduced to all the nuns with the help of a translator. I taught in English, the most common foreign language in Bhutan.
The classroom with the nuns
We were in one large, bare room, assisted only by a projector that I had brought with me. The nuns sat on the ground. Our first bonding experience was when I saw them there all around me, with their orange robes, completely bald, looking at me with calm suspicion (see the second figure). My task was not so much to change their views to be in favor of modern science, but to inform them on how science see the issues closest to them, such as life, evolution and consciousness. The main idea of these lessons is based on a fundamental idea of the Dalai Lama. He believes his monks and nuns should be well-informed on the world they live in, and therefore should know about modern science, too.
At my first lesson, I had the honor of having the region's most famous Rinpoche, Khyentsee Yangsi Rinpochè, participate. He is the reincarnation of the most famous revered Tibetan spiritual master of the xx.th century, Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, who was also a teacher of the Dalai Lama himself. . In the Buddhist world, the fact that someone is considered to be the reincarnation of an old master is quite widely accepted. I ceased to ask questions about this for quite some time.
Rinpoche literally means "very precious". It is often, but not exclusively, a title given to a Tulku, that is ‘reincarnated Lama’ (Lama refers to an accomplished teacher, to the Sanskrit term guru. The reincarnated Lama, according to tradition, has chosen "intentionally" to be reborn (instead of dwelling in Nirvana) in order to help sentient beings on the path of freedom from ignorance and suffering. The term Rinpocheis also used as a respectful way to address any great spiritual master or learned scholar
Returning to our Khyentsee Rinpoche: his monastery was in Paro, over an hour's drive away, and he came with his escort of monks, for all my teaching, a total of four hours (two in the morning and two in the afternoon. After my afternoon class, we had tea with him, an important time, where the young Lama posed further questions. His maturity seemed to be extraordinary, his mind acute and curiosity insatiable. I was so surprised to learn that he was only nineteen. Obviously, having been recognized as the reincarnated around 3 or 4 years old, he was immediately
subjected to a harsh discipline of studying around 12 hours a day.
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I began my lessons discussing the origins of life on earth. Bald nuns attentively looked at my colorful slides, took a lot of notes, but I could not understand from their blank faces whether or not they were following me. I had to present the BigBang first, and, I had my first surprise: a very long series of questions on this.
At first, I could not understand even a word of their questions. Apart from the rough English, the nuns talked looking down at the ground, covering their mouths with their tunics. This is an old local custom, which dictates that when you talk to a superior you must cover your mouth so as not to breathe on him/her. With the help of an interpreter, it then became clear that all thequestions concerned two major issues: the reason why (for the Big Bang), and what there was prior. This kind of curiosity was probably due to their philosophy of co-dependent arising, which says there is no such thing as the creation ex nihiloof something without any cause or condition. Every event has to be caused by at least one previous event, and it is normally caused by many interconnected events- and has to impact the next events. The discussion immediately became highly animated, and the nuns started talking without using their tunics to cover their mouths. They were not happy with the idea of a Big Bang coming from nothing, but they liked the idea of an endless cycle of Big Bang and Big Crunch, without a beginning nor an end.
The creation of the world is a very important point. In the Buddhist world, there is no creation, a paradigm that, on the other hand, represents a scientific concern, almost a fixation, in our Western world. We are fixated on studies on the origins of the universe, the origins of life, of intelligence, of humanity, and of the conscience: something that was not there before and that, at some point, comes out as a new thing from an undefined cloud of preliminary clues.The emergence of the new. The concept of emerging properties is, in fact, something that I have not been able to find in Buddhist literature. Buddhists take more into account the concept of a network– this exists because that existed, everything is connected with everything else. Therefore, there is no need for a quantic jump from existence to non-existence.
So, I explained to them that the origin of life on Earth for science is seen as a progression from aggregated molecules of inanimate matter, slowly developing in structures with architecture and functions growing more and more complex, up to the formation of cells able to reproduce themselves. The “principle of continuity” from the inorganic world to the living world did not garner much emotion from the nuns.
Then I tackled the next topic, “what is life?”for science.Here I proposed the Maturana and Varela’s vision on autopoiesis, which says the living cellular system is characterized by self-maintenance from within, namely from the inside of the boundary. It is self-maintenance based on an internal regeneration process of every component that is being transformed. Think of my beard that grows back, of my hemoglobin or of my glycogen, which are continuously regenerated from within, or of a tree, which, having lost its fruit during winter, grows new fruit and flowers in the springtime, from within.Life, I said, “is a self-organizing system that reorganizes itself from within. The product of life is its own self-organization.
I added that they should not believe to those who say that the principle of the living is reproduction, since two thirds of the human beings are not capable of reproduction (either because they are too young, too old or sterile, or because they are consecrated to religious life). Reproduction is the most important property of living things; is the basis of evolution and biodiversity. But, a property is not the essence of the thing, just like flying is a property of an airplane, but does not say anything about its actual essence. . I added, in this respect, that the equivalence between DNA and life, usually taken for granted by many in the world of traditional Western science, has had a negative influence on the studies on life
There was a little bit of peaceful discussion on this and on the difference between property and essence.
I approached then the following question: Can life be localized in a single spot, in a single reaction, in a single chemical? Could the life of a bacteria, for example, be localized in this sense?
The answer is no, I specified. Life is not localizable; life is the entire network of relations inside the living system. The life of a bacteria is the bacteria as a whole of its metabolic interactions, just like the life of an elephant is not localizable in a single organ nor in any spot, but is the ensemble of relations between all the components of the system. All the organs and perceptions cause and produce an integrated system: the living being.
This was easily accepted, probably because it corresponds to their concept of skandhas: these are five “aggregates” that put together all forms of existence for Buddhism – physical form or matter;sensation, that we experience with our senses;, perception (the capability of recognizing, which includes thinking, cognition, recognition); mental dispositions (all volitional actions, bad or good, therefore associated with karma); and consciousness. The combination of all of these aggregates, which are complex but lacking of a “self” (since none of these skandha can exist independently), gives place to life in its various forms. This corresponded to the concept that I had explained to them, of life as an integrated system and, more in general, to the concept of emergence (though Buddhism does not use this term).
The subject I talked about later, still based on Maturana and Varela’s autopoiesis theory, was that of the interaction between the living being and its environment. Chilean authors use the term cognition to define this interaction. I told them that the authors, with this term, mean that every species of living being interacts with the environment in a specific way, determined by the personal sensorial apparatus developed during evolution.
In life, we are always dealing with a cognitive interaction, and this determines a profound cohesion between the world of the living and the external environment, and this is what allows the life of the organism itself. The bacterium is then a cognitive being, but be careful, I added right away, ‘cognitive’ does not necessarily mean being equipped with mind or consciousness. It only means that the internal organization of the living organism specifically recognizes its own environment. A few examples are water to a fish, leaves to a caterpillar, webs to a spider... But, the organism is not aware of what it is doing.
After this last sentence, I immediately noticed how the faces that had followed me with understanding and interest, started to darken. And I knew why. It was the point about the absence of sentience in something which I had defined as living. I decided to postpone this subject until the next lesson, where we would speak in detail about single-celled organisms and their cognitive problems.
After the first two days, I left my rooming accommodation that had been provided by the monastery, a very dismal room at the top of the hill, only accessible by a muddy path. Instead, I elected to stay at one of the best hotels in Thimpu, the Druk hotel. The main reason I chose to relocate was for the food. All that the nuns ate was rice: a bowl of rice for breakfast, a bigger bowl of rice for lunch, and another for dinner. The nuns ate this plain rice (with the exception of certain religious holidays) every day, year after year. I started to grow concerned about their metabolisms, also because their hygienic-living conditions were not too great.
At the Druk Hotel, I ate decently. At the front of the hotel, there was a well-known caffe and bookshop, called Ambient Cafe, where I was able to drink a wonderful Italian espresso and borrow their books. I also had the pleasure of meeting some really interesting people, including Miguel, a Spanish economist who was working in Bhutan for an international NGO association.. The hotel’s location was right in the middle of Thimphu, a city without traffic lights, and only one active street, called Norzim Lam. Before dinner, a large group of people walk along Norzim Lam. One can see many elderly people, and a good portion of young people wearing the monk-like robes and white cuffs on their forearms.
The girls were still wearing long traditional skirts and dresses. I never saw a single mini-skirt around all of Bhutan. Coming from places like Bangkok and Shanghai, my two previous travel destinations, this really caught my eye. In a certain way, it was refreshing. I calculated that almost half the young people, including the girls, dressed in blue jeans, the other half in traditional dress. Some of the regulars at the Ambient Cafe told me that only five years ago, blue jeans would not have not have been seen on the street. Actually, they were prohibited. And, they added that in another five years, traditional clothing will not exist on these streets. This is social evolution making its course.