CHAN (ZEN) BUDDHISM and NIRVANA
(Published in the August 2008 edition of the Easy Bay Psychiatric Association Newsletter)
Back in 1970 when I was starting my psychiatric residency, our department chairman, Albert Stunkard, mentioned that he thought that Zen Buddhism was a powerful psychotherapeutic tool. My group of eleven fellow residents looked at each other quizzically and gave the comment little attention. We were far more focused on learning about the established schools of psychotherapy and the basics of psychopharmacology. Why would a psychiatric resident be interested in some Eastern religion? It wasn’t until this year when I began studying Zen that I thought about Dr. Stunkard’s past comment—and now I know what he was talking about.
Chan Buddhism and Zen Buddhism are the same thing—the former is the original Chinese sect, and the latter the word used by the Japanese who studied under the Chinese Chan masters. There is a Chan monastery nearby in Lafayette named Buddha Gate Monastery where I am taking a beginner’s class. This monastery is the only one in the country run exclusively by nuns without the help of monks.
Chan Buddhism’s religious teachings are called Dharmas, which are themselves very meaningful. But more relevant here is that Chan teaches individuals to become enlightened and self aware through meditative techniques that quiet the mind of past, present and future concerns that occupy our thoughts constantly. When our mind is quiet, we become aware of our own intrinsic nature and are more in touch with peaceful thoughts. In neurophysiologic terms, these meditative techniques attempt to quiet the left side of the brain and allow the right brain to dominate one’s perceptions. It is in the right brain where people can experience an epiphany and come to feel at one with the natural world and empathic with other sentient living beings.
Over the years, many people have argued for the legalization of various drugs that enhance these peaceful right-brained perceptions. But the drug culture has led to many casualties--people who have lost their psychological equilibrium. One needs left-brain activity as well to bring balance to our perceptions or we can lose touch with what it means to be human, live in a society, and behave appropriately.
Recently, there was a well-publicized case of a Harvard brain researcher, Jill Bolte Taylor, Ph.D., who suffered a massive left sided stroke in 1996 at age 37. She experienced what she called nirvana (a supremely tranquil state of mind) as she temporarily experienced only right-sided brain activity. She perceived herself as a living membrane filled with fluid that contained molecules and atoms that were connected to all the other molecules and atoms in the universe. She saw herself in the form of a living body that could reach out and affect the world she lived in but only during her temporary state as a human being. She felt entirely at peace, empathic, and euphoric, and could see the meaning of life and her oneness with the universe. As her stroke resolved and her left-brain healed, she returned to a state of psycho-physiological equilibrium that she understood to be her normal self that could function in the real world.
Dr. Taylor now speaks about her experience nationally (see the New York Times article about her entitled “A Superhighway to Bliss,” her You Tube interview on the Oprah show, or her memoir entitled “My Stroke of Insight”). The most fascinating aspect of Dr. Taylor’s experience is that as a result of her stroke, she achieved what the Zen Masters seek to accomplish through decades of meditation practice. They want to hold onto that blissful state of nirvana during which they transcend mundane existence and are unperturbed by anything. This is what Dr. Taylor describes more scientifically as the “deep inner peace circuitry of our right hemisphere.”
Many of the answers to the mysteries and intangible dimensions of the universe —the mystical, spiritual, or cosmic—possibly are already encoded information concealed in parts of our right brain. All religions and philosophies struggle to gain more insight into this seemingly unknowable information. Chan Buddhism appears to have some techniques to give us greater access to this realm. Most people, at a minimum, could benefit from Chan’s ability to enhance equanimity, blissful feelings, insight, and inner directedness.
If I had been more open minded and more aware of Eastern religious traditions as a first year psychiatric resident, it might not have taken me until the near end of my career to appreciate this.
