Contents in Brief -- Chapters Containing Testable Hypotheses -- List of Figures -- List of Tables -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- By Way of Introduction -- Is There Any Common Ground between -- Zen and the Brain? -- A Brief Outline of Zen History -- But What Is Zen? -- Mysticism, Zen, Religion, and Neuroscience -- Western Perspectives on Mystical Experiences -- Is Mysticism a Kind of Schizophrenia in Disguise? -- The Semantics of Self -- Constructing Our Self -- Some ABCs of the -- The Zen Mirror: Beyond Narcissism -- and Depersonalization -- Where Does Zen Think It s Coming From? -- What Is Meditation? -- Ryoko-in, Kyoto, 1974 -- Zazen at Ryoko-in -- Attention -- The Attentive Art of Meditation -- Restraint and Renunciation -- Zen Meditative Techniques and Skills -- Physiological Changes during Meditation -- Brain Waves and Their Limitations -- The EEG in Meditation -- Breathing In -- Breathing Out -- The Effects of Sensorimotor Deprivation -- Monks and Clicks: Habituation -- The Koan and Sanzen: Kyoto, 1974 -- A Quest for Non-Answers: Mondo and Koan -- The Roshi -- The Mindful, Introspective Path toward Insight -- Inkblots, Blind Spots, and High Spots -- Sesshin and Teisho at Ryoko-in, 1974 -- Sesshin -- The Meditative Approach to the Dissolution of the Self -- Brain in Overview: The Large of It -- Brain in Overview: The Small of It -- Brain in Overview: Coordinated Networks Synthesizing -- Higher Functions -- The Orienting Reflex and Activation -- Arousal Pathways in the Reticular Formation and Beyond -- Acetylcholine Systems -- The Septum and Pleasure -- The Attachments of the Cingulate Gyrus -- The Amygdala and Fear -- Remembrances and the Hippocampus -- Visceral Drives and the Hypothalamus -- Biogenic Amines: Three Systems -- GABA and Inhibition -- Peptides -- The Brain s Own Opioids -- Ripples in the Next Cell: Second and Third Messengers.

The -- Withdraws -- Matters of Taste -- The Mouse in Victory and Defeat -- The Central Gray: Offense, Defense, and Loss of Pain -- The Third Route: Stress Responses within the Brain -- The Large Visual Brain -- Where Is It? The Parietal Lobe Pathway -- What Is It? The Temporal Lobe Pathway -- What Should I Do About It? The Frontal Lobes -- Ripples in Larger Systems: Laying Down and -- Retrieving Memories -- The Thalamus -- The Reticular Nucleus -- The Pulvinar -- Higher Mechanisms of Attention -- Looking, and Seeing Preattentively -- Laboratory Correlates of Awareness, Attention, Novelty, -- and Surprise -- Biological Theories: What Causes Mystical Experiences? -- How Does Meditation Act? -- Problems with Words: Mind -- Ordinary Forms of Conscious Awareness -- Variations on the Theme of Consciousness -- Alternate States of Consciousness: Avenues of Entry -- The Architecture of Sleep -- Desynchronized Sleep -- Other Perspectives in Dreams -- Lucid Dreaming -- Conditioning: Learning and Unlearning -- Other Ways to Change Behavior -- The Awakening from Hibernation -- Tidal Rhythms and Biological Clocks -- The Roots of Our Emotions -- The Spread of Positive Feeling States -- Pain and the Relief of Pain -- Suffering and the Relief of Suffering -- Bridging the Two Hemispheres -- The Pregnant Meditative Pause -- Side Effects of Meditation: -- The Light -- Bright Lights and Blank Vision -- Faces in the Fire: Illusions and Hallucinations -- Stimulating Human Brains -- The Ins and Outs of Imagery -- The Tachistoscope -- The Descent of Charles Darwin: Computer Parallels -- Bytes of Memory -- Where Is the Phantom Limb? -- The Feel of Two Hands -- The Attentive Cat -- Emotionalized Awareness without Sensate Loss -- Seizures, Religious Experience, and Patterns of Behavior -- The Fleeting Truths of Nitrous Oxide -- The Roots of Laughter.

How Do Psychedelic and Certain Other Drugs Affect -- the Brain? -- Levels and Sequences of Psychedelic Experience after LSD -- The Miracle of Marsh Chapel -- How Do Psychedelic Drugs Affect Amine Receptors? -- Near-Death Experiences -- Far-Death Attitudes -- Triggers -- The Surge -- First Zen-Brain Mondo -- Vacuum Plenum: Kyoto, December 1974 -- The Leaf: Coda -- The Semantics of Samadhi -- The Vacuum Plenum of Absorption: An Agenda of Events -- to Be Explained -- The Plunge: Blankness, Then Blackness -- The Hallucinated Leaf -- Space -- The Ascent of Charles Lindbergh: Ambient Vision -- The Ambient Vision of Meditative Absorption -- The Sound of Silence -- The Loss of the Self in Clear, Held Awareness -- The Warm Affective Tone -- Motor and Other Residues of Internal Absorption -- The When and Where of Time -- Gateway to Paradox -- Second Zen-Brain Mondo -- Dimensions of Meaning -- Authentic Meanings within Wide-Open Boundaries -- Word Problems: Oneness and Unity -- How Often Does Enlightenment Occur? -- A Taste of Kensho: London, 1982 -- What Is My Original Face? -- Major Characteristics of Insight-Wisdom in Kensho -- Prajna: Insight-Wisdom -- Suchness -- Direct Perception of the Eternally Perfect World -- The Construction of Time -- The Dissolution of Time -- The Death of Fear -- Emptiness -- Objective Vision: The Lunar View -- Are There Levels and Sequences of Nonattainment ? -- Preludes with Potential: Dark Nights and Depressions -- Operational Differences between Absorption -- and Insight-Wisdom -- Reflections on Kensho, Personal and Neurological -- Selective Mechanisms Underlying Kensho -- Third Zen-Brain Mondo -- The State of Ultimate Pure Being -- The Power of Silence -- Beyond Sudden States of Enlightenment -- The Exceptional Stage of Ongoing Enlightened Traits -- Simplicity and Stability -- An Ethical Base of Zen?.

Compassion, the Native Virtue -- Etching In and Out -- Aging in the Brain -- The Celebration of Nature -- Expressing Zen in Action -- The Other Side of Zen -- Still-Evolving Brains in Still-Evolving Societies -- Commentary on the Trait Change of -- Ongoing Enlightenment -- In Closing -- Introduction to the -- Selections from -- Suggested Further Reading -- Glossary -- References and Notes -- Source Notes -- Index.