For more than 30 years, scientists and Tibetan Buddhist scholar practitioners have been involved in deep and sustained conversations. The encounters have created new interdisciplinary fields of academic inquiry, such as Contemplative Studies and Contemplative Science, domains that now have dedicated peer-reviewed journals and scholarly conferences. At the same time, Tibetan monastics are from a young age becoming exposed to scientific thought through the integration of science curriculum into monastic education. These reciprocal influences are changing some of the ways that scholars think of and practice science, and some Tibetan contemplatives have become actively involved in scientific projects. In the currents of globalization, propelled by technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, such processes of mutual influence and integration are bound to intensify. As traditional demarcations and barriers rapidly melt away, it is imperative that we learn from each other—and learn well.
Founded in 2019, the Center for Study of Apparent Selves (CSAS) began as an interdisciplinary translation effort, focusing on the development of interfaces between Buddhism and Artificial Intelligence (AI). As a global initiative based in Kathmandu, Nepal, CSAS has since then grown to encompass fields such as AI, Biology, Cognitive Science, Computer Science, Philosophy, and Religion. In this way, CSAS aims to be a hub of research and dialogue, bringing great wisdom traditions and modern science into meaningful and productive interaction.
This collection of short essays was initiated at a meeting between CSAS scholars and the Tibetan Buddhist master, Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche, at a workshop in Nepal in 2022. The workshop aimed at exploring the potential for thinking together with Tibetan religious leaders and for integrating Buddhist insights about the nature of the mind, agency, selfhood, and collective well-being into the rapidly developing field of AI. During this meeting, Rinpoche graciously offered traditional teaching and instruction to the scientists, and at the end of their time together he gave them the text that is included as the first chapter here.
Responding to Rinpoche’s gift, Dr. Michael Levin suggested that the participating scientists individually formulate, as concisely and accessibly as possible, those scientific insights and discoveries that they have each found to be the most incisive and potentially world transforming—insights that they would wish religious leaders, such as Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche, to be able to take into account as they offer guidance to their communities. At two subsequent CSAS workshops (one at Tufts University in the USA and the other at home in Kathmandu), the participating scientists received the same invitation to share what they consider the most important insights from their respective domains. This compendium contains their generous and pithy responses.
The essays featured here should be considered an invitation, with hopes of provoking a reflexive and reciprocal dialogue between scholars of AI, Biology, Cognitive Science, Psychology, Philosophy, Religion, and other domains. At present, the chapters can be read in English and Tibetan, but we hope to soon make them available in other languages too.
In our increasingly connected world, marked by quickly and dramatically changing technological practices and by large amounts of scholarly output, we aim at creating a space for conversation on some of the most cutting-edge issues, pressing topics, and unsolved mysteries—such as the qualities of natural and artificial minds, selfhood and agency, the origins and evolution of diverse intelligences, integration of technology into biological processes, and ultimately, the possibility of meaningful and sustainable flourishing of all forms of life. This collection is not meant to be an exhaustive representation of latest scientific insights. Rather, we are hoping for this to become a living, growing and developing set of ideas and discoveries: An emerging and adaptive compendium that may help provoke, inform, challenge, and inspire.