Фрагмент интервью «Investigating the Space of the Invisible» с профессором Arthur Zajonc, членом директорского и научного советов Mind and Life institute, участником и научным координатором многих встреч Далай Ламы с учеными, которое взял у него 15 октября 2003 г. Otto Scharmer.
Полный текст интервью:
http://www.dialogonleadership.org/Zajonc.html#one
XXI. A Scientist - Dalai Lama Dialogue at MIT
COS: I did want to bring up one final example that has been quite an experience for me-the event you put on with the Dalai Lama and all the others of your circle. It was quite amazing. There were maybe 1,100 in the audience?
Arthur Zajonc: Yeah, 1,100.
COS: We sat there for a couple of hours, and something took place. When I returned on that first evening, all of a sudden I realized that my whole sense of self and my own personal field were really impacted. It was almost as if I had meditated for a week or so in nature. You are really operating from an enhanced and much more open field around you, a sort of clearing, ofLichtung. That's when I first realized the impact, apart from all the intellectual stimulus, which was of course more tangible.
And you have been right at the center of this Dalai Lama circle. Could you comment on what that experience was like for you?
Arthur Zajonc: Well, first of all, your experience wasn't unique at all. I was struck by how many people like you came up afterward, people of accomplishment with experience in conferences and meetings. I could see they experienced the field that you are talking about, and it had nothing to do specifically with the content, although the content was quite interesting and they found it stimulating. There was something about the geometry of relationships, the way the whole gathering was held, the nature of the dialogue and exchange, which created an aura into which they moved. It wasn't just us on stage in the aura. The whole assembly moved into it. It was sustained for the full two days. The next week, I met with three or four people from the Amherst area and later with a larger group, and it was still echoing in those who attended. It took a couple of weeks for it to actually settle out. But, the aura is residual. For a couple of weeks, this was just simply a part of people's field.
That was an unusual phenomenon. I have been to other gatherings that had a similar effect. One was a three day vigil and memorial for a young person's death. For days afterwards, where the vigil and other events took place, the experience was like a waterscape, because the space was all alive and you felt it in the landscape itself.
So there are crossings and mergings that take place. Thresholds are crossed in those situations and this should I think be noticed, be honored. You could ask why it happens. What caused it? It would be very un-Goethean to look for the mechanical cause, to ask what the essential conditions of appearance were.
COS: And what did happen?
Arthur Zajonc: It's a very difficult thing to pin down. I've worked now with the Dalai Lama on several occasions and moderated or led conversations at four of them, if you count the MIT event. My general experience has been that in working with him, with the Buddhist scholars, and a good group of scientists, something of this nature happens to some degree.
Part of the formula is that, first of all, the Dalai Lama has his own presence. It's unusual in a certain way, because he's a very normal kind of guy. He doesn't come across immediately as having a larger field than a normal person.
COS: True.
Arthur Zajonc: But his field is a kind of indirection. It's not projection. It's actually an indirection, a kind of self-negation. Just being who he is, being very understated and very modern in that sense. His presence works much more from the periphery. The participants, if they're chosen reasonably well -and they are not necessarily Buddhists (in fact, most of the scientists who show up have no Buddhist connections) - bring the part of them that is their largest and most humane dimension with them. They don't factor it out and leave it at the door as often happens in the academy. They bring it into the conversation with him. They bring heartfelt questions and problems, even if they're framed in very small, scientific terminologies. Something of that deeper set of commitments and longings are there with them. It's a bit like when I was 19 or 20 and going through my existential crisis. I refused to factor out the cultural and existential questions. I wanted to bring them with me into my life of science. I believe they all want to do that, but they haven't been able to
Now they're with him, they have traveled to India perhaps, because they want to bring their commitments and longings as well as their science to him and so they bring it to the whole gathering. So his modest presence does provide a singular opportunity for people to bring all of who they are into the space.
Second, they discover that when the Buddhists speak, they speak with such brilliance and such intelligence that their hopes aren't dashed. A lot of times in similar settings, you bring your hopes and you get religious dogma. You want to come as a scientist with all your intelligence and all your inarticulate longings and be met on the other side. You long to be met by intelligence concerning the existential questions that you really aren't able to deal with too well. But what you get are pieties. Simple statements about what you should do and shouldn't do with your life. Then you think, "Oh, who needs this? Let's get back to where I was. At least I was doing an honest day's work as a scientist. I'm not going to go and jump off a cliff or buy into something. Let the others do that."
But you discover with the Buddhist scholars and the Dalai Lama that you don't get pieties. The response you get is the fruit of thousands of years, literally 2,000 years, of contemplative practice and intellectual effort, with lots of sophistication. All the big issues are present in their treatment of mind or ethics, together with a nuanced discussion of consciousness. So a kind of joy starts to creep in that sometimes becomes almost intoxicating in the small group discussions. You'll start to experience the way the Buddhists are handling the question, the way the Dalai Lama is chiming in, the way the scientists are performing right at the top of their level. They're asking all the hardest questions of themselves and everyone is willing to be vulnerable. The Buddhists are not taking advantage of the scientist's vulnerability. They're speaking right into it with their most precious thoughts and their own questions. You think, "This is research. This is research at the highest possible human level. This is what we're designed to do, not just think clever thoughts, but deep thoughts, large thoughts, and compassionate thoughts, to act compassionately, and be good to one another. And have fun while we're doing it."
I recall one such moment vividly. It was after two days of meetings in 2002, at the end of an afternoon session in Dharmasala. The Dalai Lama got up, thanked everybody, and left the room. I looked around. Everybody was standing, of course. They all looked at me and went, "Wow." The whole afternoon had lifted off. Everybody in the room felt so alive. You really felt that this is what we came to be and do, and it echoed for the whole evening.
Sometimes the sessions are a little more mundane. There's good quality material, things happen, but they expand to a certain point and then contract. But when you get two or three times like that in a meeting, you're really pleased. By the end, you feel that somehow or other a great wealth has been achieved where each person has brought his or her very best and contributed it, with great integrity, openness, and no dogma. Everybody is there to discover. We could all be wrong. We'll dare to say certain things normally not said. We're not pushing anything on the other. We offer our best with great open-mindedness, great hope, and affection.
As a moderator, what I've discovered is that, in order to create during a relatively short time a certain capacity for exchange and trust, I have to be willing, in the right measure and with the right words, to encourage people to dare to go further. They have to be willing, without prying or pushing beyond what's appropriate, to come back to the issue and to go further with it in the room. I ask people to go a little deeper, to be a little more open than they just were. You know in your mind, as a good moderator, who each of these people are. So you know the hidden cards they're not playing, the hidden things they long to say. But it's like standing guard over them. You honor their reticence, but you encourage them to go further. You have to open the door and say, "It's okay to say what I know you want to say, and it's okay for you to respond." I may know how the dialogue will go ahead of time, as the moderator. I could write it down for you. But I can't insert myself. What I can do is say to you, "Wouldn't you like to take what you said before a little further? I think that we could go further here and open up the question." And then I turn to the Dalai Lama, who may be reluctant, and say, "I know he's not going as far as he wants to go or could go. But, Your Holiness, we've just heard this and this. Couldn't the Buddhists say a little something more about this?" Then you can see him trying to decide whether he dares to do it or whether it'll be an affront or whether it'll be skillful means. Then, if you've judged correctly, he comes in. The others come back. And then you just feel that you've moved up another notch or two, and the whole room starts to become more dense and more alive. The field starts to become more energized.
So the moderator has to be constantly listening for opportunities to serve that other purpose, which is not my goal but the goal of the community. When it works and when you can then crystallize or summarize what has happened for people so that it all stays clear and lucid in front of them, then you are of service.
In terms of the group, the collective, and how to serve the collective, that's where I've had most of my experience. I've tried to play a positive role in the social groups I've been in. But I have not been a convener or an architect of those groups. The kinds of groups that I have been part of had an intellectual or a thematic agenda, like the Dalai Lama or the Mind & Life conferences, or there has been a project agenda, where I and others want to create a new institution or take on an important task.
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I've been part of many Dalai Lama events. I'm on the board of directors and the scientific board of the Mind and Life Institute. Part of the genius of the events has been steadfastness over 18 years of history and faithfulness. It was near collapse two years ago. When Cisco [Francisco Varela] died, Adam Engle (the president) didn't see how to go forward. Through talking with many of his close friends, the right ideas and the courage came into the group, and he went on without Francisco, finding a slightly different way of proceeding. I think Cisco would be pleased. But it's taken on a different form. I think that ripeness was there. We've done it so many times and knew our roles so well. We had built up a trust.
The remarkable thing is the level of commitment his illness put into it. When we were Dharamsala in 2002, Cisco had already died, and His Holiness spoke about his loss.
Then he spoke about the work that we were doing and how it really wasn't about any of us. It wasn't that he didn't care for each individual, honor them, and love them in his own way. Still it wasn't a personal thing. The Dalai Lama wasn't meeting scientists merely out of personal curiosity. He was interested in many of the scientific discoveries we discussed, but before long, it was clear this was something that had larger significance, both for the Buddhist community and, I think he believes also, for the West. He doesn't want to say that, but I'll certainly say it.
So his level of commitment has increased over the years to the point where it is one of the three main focuses of what he's doing. He's working for an autonomous province in Tibet. He's teaching his monks. And he's meeting with science groups. He said to us that he will continue until he can't do it anymore, and then it should go on after him. It will go on differently after he dies, or after he's incapacitated, but he feels our explorations should go on.
So an earnestness and quality of commitment have grown into the whole movement and this has been a real blessing. The core group is pretty committed and quite diverse. They're not all Buddhists but we are committed to seeing the dialogue take place.
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So it's a mystery. You can't program it. In that sense, it's not a causal mechanism. It's a way of being with each other. It's a way of opening the heart to another, being vulnerable and being open. Many of the people in our meetings have been colleagues or friends for 10 years or 15 years. Alan Wallace and I used to sit just like this in these chairs. For nearly four years, we sat and talked like this, every week. I knew at one point during those conversations that I would be with him and the Dalai Lama together. I never said anything about it. I just knew that somehow that was going to happen.
COS: When was that?
Arthur Zajonc: About 12 years ago.
COS: So you met with him every week?
Arthur Zajonc: Yeah, you could say he was my student. I mean, I was also his student. We're almost the same age. He'd done the equivalent of a full Ph.D., advanced studies in Tibetan Buddhism while a monk in India and Switzerland. I'd done my study and research over here. When we met we held our own Mind & Life dialogue for three and a half years.
And then we get to do it together with others. You know, there were times in some of my meetings when I thought that this is what spiritual science really is. I'm now in the midst of a spiritual, scientific research community. Every question can be asked. Every tool can be used, contemplative tools, external scientific tools, the latest things from all sides. It's all directed toward human betterment and compassionate action, reducing suffering and making this world a truly great place. And we're doing it with joy and celebrating each other's capacity. This is how we should be at every university. Our universities are so remarkable. We put so much of our resources into creating the place where students can come for four to eight, nine, ten years of study and research, and it's all for them. All those resources. Forget the disciplinary turf warfare! Do it this way, the way we did at MIT or in Dharamsala. It doesn't mean you have to agree with one another; just rejoice in the dialogue itself, and sometime it all comes together. Sometimes it happens.
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