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Thupten Jinpa began the afternoon with a presentation establishing conceptual links between the two investigative traditions of Buddhist thought and contemporary science, drawing especially on key aspects of classical Buddhist epistemology. Questions in the philosophy of science, such as the relationship between scientific claims and truth, scientific method and its legitimate scope, and the central role of observation, hypothesis and experiment verification in science will be addressed and contrasted with relevant notions in classical Buddhist philosophical inquiry.

For many years, physicist Arthur Zajonc and neuroscientist Richard Davidson have worked with the Dalai Lama at the intersection of contemporary science and Buddhist thought. They offered their views on the power of this dialogue, and its significance for themselves and their work. This leads to larger questions of wider importance. Why are Western scientists interested in a dialogue with Buddhism or the contemplative traditions more generally?

Diana Chapman Walsh speaks to the trajectory of the Mind & Life dialogues and provides the social context and cultural relevance of this topic of craving, desire, and addiction.

Richie Davidson provides the scientific context for the forthcoming discussion on craving, desire, and addiction.

Research on addiction or problematic substance use has been dominated by a biomedical model focused on choices individuals make and problems that ensue, including damage to the brain and body, health, and well-being. However, it is also crucial to consider the contexts that may shape and constrain individual choices.

Chemicals that activate the reward system are reinforcing to a wide variety of species from reptiles to humans. Their physiological activation of brain reward systems is believed to be the starting point for the neurobiological changes that launch the addiction trajectory. Research on addiction has started to uncover the sequence of events and long-lasting sequelae that can result from the persistent abuse of addictive substances. These studies have shown how repeated drug use can target key molecules (both common and specific for various drug types) and brain circuits, and eventually disrupt the higher order processes that underlie emotions, cognition, and behavior, and enable an individual to exert self-control.

The early Buddhist sutras–scriptures attributed to the Buddha–speak of how attachment or craving constitute a primary source of our suffering, and how true freedom from suffering emerges through letting go of attachment or craving. Underlying these statements is an important psychological insight that draws an intimate connection between our perceptions of the world and the experience they give rise to on the one hand, and the arising of craving and how this leads us to act in a particular way on the other.

Brain mechanisms for intensely “wanting” something are different from the mechanisms for “liking” that same thing. “Wanting” generators, robust and large mechanisms that include many brain structures, are easily stimulated into highly reactive states. In stimulated brain states, encountering cues related to the temptation (or vividly imagining it) triggers intense pulses of craving. In addicts, the brain “wanting” generators may become further stimulated through neural sensitization by drugs (or by natural causes).

Lewis begins by describing a typical episode of pursuing and taking drugs based on his own experience of addiction during his 20s. This vignette demonstrates how thoughts about drugs and feelings of craving grow together in a person’s mind, until he or she finally gives in. Then comes the loss and despair, and the cycle repeats itself. According to psychological theory, the attraction to the cycle of craving and the use of drugs increases over months and years.