David Brooks discusses the “militant materialism of some modern scientists” then says:

Over the past several years, the momentum has shifted away from hard-core materialism. The brain seems less like a cold machine. It does not operate like a computer. Instead, meaning, belief and consciousness seem to emerge mysteriously from idiosyncratic networks of neural firings. Those squishy things called emotions play a gigantic role in all forms of thinking. Love is vital to brain development.

Researchers now spend a lot of time trying to understand universal moral intuitions. Genes are not merely selfish, it appears. Instead, people seem to have deep instincts for fairness, empathy and attachment.

Scientists have more respect for elevated spiritual states. Andrew Newberg of the University of Pennsylvania has shown that transcendent experiences can actually be identified and measured in the brain (people experience a decrease in activity in the parietal lobe, which orients us in space). The mind seems to have the ability to transcend itself and merge with a larger presence that feels more real.

This new wave of research will not seep into the public realm in the form of militant atheism. Instead it will lead to what you might call neural Buddhism.

If you survey the literature (and I’d recommend books by Newberg, Daniel J. Siegel, Michael S. Gazzaniga, Jonathan Haidt, Antonio Damasio and Marc D. Hauser if you want to get up to speed), you can see that certain beliefs will spread into the wider discussion.

First, the self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships. Second, underneath the patina of different religions, people around the world have common moral intuitions. Third, people are equipped to experience the sacred, to have moments of elevated experience when they transcend boundaries and overflow with love. Fourth, God can best be conceived as the nature one experiences at those moments, the unknowable total of all there is.

In their arguments with Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, the faithful have been defending the existence of God. That was the easy debate. The real challenge is going to come from people who feel the existence of the sacred, but who think that particular religions are just cultural artifacts built on top of universal human traits. It’s going to come from scientists whose beliefs overlap a bit with Buddhism.

This seems to be the “Buddhism is the religion of the future” meme again.

I came across a gathering (the Lotus Lantern Parade) in celebration of the Buddha’s birthday yesterday in New York’s Union Square (quite the Buddhist hotspot lately) and it made me think how scattered holidays are in western Buddhism. Maybe westerners don’t want them, having secularized the holidays of their cradle religions. But it seems to play into the worries Clark Strand expressed over the future of the dharma in America. Pardon the crummy cellphone picture.

Loden Jinpa has started up a promising new Buddhist Forums site. He blogs about it here.

“Whatever the reason, the gap between American justice and that of the rest of the world is enormous and growing.”

The diversity of China, photographs from National Geographic.

[The following is a guest post from Tricycle's Copy Editor Karen Ready.]

I’m puzzled that virtually no New York bloggers have posted anything about Evan Brenner’s work in progress The Buddha-In His Own Words, a one-man performance of excerpts from the life and teachings of the Buddha taken directly from the vast collection we know as the Pali canon. These texts form the basis of the Theravada tradition: discourses, teachings, monastic rules, and philosophical texts attributed in large part to the Buddha and his disciples, they were passed on orally and committed to writing only after the Buddha’s death. The play is the result of some four years of work (so far) on Brenner’s part to “assemble the life of the Buddha.” I like his choice of “assemble”: in fact, Mark Epstein has referred to the play as “masterfully crafted,” and both terms provide a good sense of Brenner’s deceptively simple eighty-minute creation, like the attentive folding of an origami shape. Here the actor-playwright takes on all the roles, from the young prince who leaves his royal surroundings to seek an answer to the world of suffering and death he finds beyond the palace gates, to those he encounters along the way (including Mara the tempter), to members of his ever-growing following as well as opponents who brought tragedy to his later years. (more…)

This picture from the Times was fairly striking. Americans in action-paparazzi poses photographing monks. The article is about tourism in a town in Laos. [Photo: David Longstreath/Associated Press]

Is there more crime near slaughterhouses?

And you may have heard about the recent confusion between Nepal and Tibet by a member of President Bush’s crack team of foreign policy experts. Get the scoop from the Worst Horse.

Nine monks arrested for allegedly planting a bomb:

China has arrested nine monks for a bomb attack on a government building in Tibet last month, an official said yesterday.

Tibetan support groups warned that it was impossible to verify the claims because the authorities do not allow independent observers into the region.

The state-run Xinhua news agency alleged that the monks from the Tongxia monastery - around 850 miles east of Lhasa - fled after their homemade bomb exploded in Gyanbe township but later confessed to planting it. There was no mention of casualties or damage.

Beijing works on clearing the air for the Olympics.

The DL asks for Tibet to be opened to the world.

Professor M.D. Nalapat asks, Can the Chinese government control the “Tibet flu”? (Yes, but for how long?)

China and Russia’s support prop up the Burmese junta, says Myat Soe.

China isn’t solely to blame for the survival of the Burmese junta, says an editorial in The Canberra Times.

Susan Kaiser Greenland in HuffPo on China and the media.

Back in the old days when there were fewer distractions, you wouldn’t miss as much spending a few years in a mountaintop cave. But these days… but 28 people did just that in Australia recently (except for the cave and mountaintop parts.) From the Buddhist Channel.

Plus, new treatments for Parkinson’s disease at Taiwan’s Tzu Chi Hospital.