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Zen and the Brain: Toward an Understanding of Meditation and Consciousness. By James H. Austin. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998. Pp. xxiv + 844.
A great deal has been written by medical doctors on the functioning of the brain, and by meditators on the effects of meditation on the human personality. Medical researchers, who have attempted to bridge this gap through scientific studies on the efficacy of meditation in bringing about physiological and mental changes in the human personality, have been downright skeptical concerning meditation's positive efficacy. However, serious meditators have enthusiastically cited the history of the Eastern and Western meditation tradition as a justification for their claims. One of the major hurdles in this fascinating area of research has been the fact that very few medical researchers have had any personal experience with meditation while the vast majority of meditators have had no training in the neurology of the brain.
James Austin is among a rare breed of scholars who, as a trained neurologist, is thoroughly knowledgeable about the anatomy, physiology, and chemistry of the brain, and as a Zen practitioner he is fully familiar with the meditative experience. In his book Zen and the Brain: Toward an Understanding of Meditation and Consciousness,...