Online conference on “Tibetology and Buddhology at the intersection of science and religion”.

Russia: The Honorary Representative of His Holiness the Dalai Lama to Russia, Telo Tulku Rinpoche took part in the fourth international conference “Tibetology and Buddhology at the intersection of science and religion”  held online on November 9-11, 2020.

The conference discussed Tibet’s Relations with neighbouring countries; the state of Buddhist studies in Kalmykia, Buryatia, Tuva, other regions of Russia, Mongolia and other countries; the activities of the 14th Dalai Lama in the preservation of Buddhism and development of contacts between religion and science and secular ethics; the role of the Tibetan community in preserving Buddhism and Tibetan culture, and Buddhism and science.

The participants analysed the results of research on the effects of meditation on the brain, as well as the phenomenon that Buddhists call “postmortem tukdam meditation”, when the body after death is confirmed for a long time does not show signs of decomposition. 

In 2019-2020, by agreement with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, a well-known physiologist Svyatoslav Medvedev who headed The N.P. Bekhtereva Institute of the human brain of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) for more than a quarter of a century opened two research centres for meditation and altered states of consciousness in Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in southern India. The research used EEG and other methods using specially imported equipment to collect psychophysiological data from more than a hundred practitioners from different monasteries during deep meditation. In addition, Russian experts for the first time gained access to the bodies of monks in the state of tukdam.

The conference was attended by Honored scientist of Russia, Director of the Institute for cognitive studies, St. Petersburg State University, corresponding member of the Russian education Academy Tatiana Chernigovskaya, RAS academician, neurobiologist Konstantin Anokhin, professor of biological faculty of Moscow State University Alexander Kaplan, head of the Department of psychology and neuroscience, Institute for biomedical problems RAS, Professor Yuri Bubeev, Yulia Boytsova from the N.P.Bekhtereva Institute of the human brain of RAS and other Russian scientists, as well as a number of Buddhist scientist-monks.

Russian scientists express hope that scientific cooperation with His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Buddhist monks will help find a connection between the ideal and material worlds, as well as answer other questions of neuroscience, physics and medicine.

The two-day conference was organized by the Institute of Oriental studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Save Tibet Foundation. 

-Filed by OOT, Moscow