[Buddha-l] Abdhidharma vindicated once again

[Jamie Hubbard]

Sorry to jump in this thread late, but a few days away and stuff flies 
fast around here.

On 3/3/2011 7:37 AM, Dan Lusthaus wrote:
> A NYTimes interview with a major researcher on anesthesia.
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/01/science/01conv.html?hpw
>
> The interesting portion, from a Buddhist-historical perspective, is what his
> current research is showing, namely that anesthesia allows surgery to be
> painless, with the person in a coma-like condition (not asleep), not by
> shutting down all the brain processes, but rather by *activating* certain
> functions which then *block* normal pathways, and the coma is maintained by
> an ongoing activity that blocks or jams the transmissions. The brain is
> running interference. This "Blocking" method is EXACTLY how Vasubandhu
> explained nirodha-samapatti
[from the article]

> Under general anesthesia, the brain is not entirely shut down. Certain
> parts are turned off; others are quite active - not only "active," but there
> is a level of activity that is quite regular.
>
> So in some
> parts what we see is that activity is turned off, leading to
> unconsciousness. In other parts, we see activity that is more active than
> normal. This also leads to unconsciousness. In sum: the drugs alter the way
> the brain transmits information.
How is the maintenance of a "quite regular" (though "more active") 
*brain activity* at all similar to either the blocking method described 
by Vasubandhu or the "kaaya-saak.si" that you mention below?

A few replies from now you reject the idea that jivatendriya could be 
brain activity, yet here the anesthestic effect is clearly (posited to 
be) the result (partly) of brain activity. I think that what is 
interesting to the good doctor is not that some parts of the brain 
remain active during a state of anesthesia (that isn't news) but that 
some brain activity seems to *contribute* to the state of anesthesia. 
How could any brain activity continue in a state of nirodha-samapatti 
and thereby contribute to an on-going blocking of feeling and perception?

I am interested in neural/neuronal correlates of Buddhist states of mind 
and wonder what the neural footprint of nirodha-samapatti would look 
like. Everybody is all hot and bothered these days about this stuff (the 
"lama in the lab"), and it often seems like nonsense to me. So I realize 
that trying to bring nirodha-samapatti into an empirical lab situation 
might be a bad case of apples and oranges. But you started it :)

You later write,

"But nirodha-samapatti is a (nearly?) comatose state in which the major
difference -- according to some of the earliest texts -- between someone in
nirodha-samapatti and a corpse is that nirodha-samapatti still retains
life-force (jivatendriya) and body heat, while a corpse does not. One has no
conscious awareness; this is more than blocking pain."

Would this have a neural footprint? I had always assumed that Buddhists 
would think nirodha-samapatti flat-lined, while of course bodily heat 
would in fact turn up on both an EKG or EEG (were such a state 
attainable and not just the product of "prodigy-making," as later 
comments have it). I don't know what jivatendriya is-- does it have 
biological footprint? And where does kaaya-saak.sin, "bodily witness", 
fit into this?

Jamie