Abhidhamma > Abhidhamma via Science

July 15, 2016; revised February 16, 2021

1. In this section, I have two goals:

▪Introduce Abhidhamma in a scientific way that can be understood not only by people with scientific backgrounds but anyone with an interest. It will complement the other section on Abhidhamma, which necessarily involves a lot of Pāli terminologies.

▪To demonstrate that the current hypothesis by scientists that consciousness originates in the brain is not correct.

2. I will also make predictions in this section on what the scientists are likely to confirm in the future.

▪We all are impressed by the scientific advances made during the past 100 years or so making our lives easier and more productive. I am actually a cheerleader for scientific and technological advances.

▪Physics had been my passion since high school days, and that changed when I started learning Buddha Dhamma several years ago. I still love and work on topics of interest in physics (and science in general). Fortunately, I am finding that those two interests are not mutually exclusive, and there is significant overlap. In fact, this section is the result of my two overlapping interests.

3. Despite the advances in science and technology, there is much about the human mind that science does not understand, and has not even begun to understand. Western science is based on the five physical senses, leaving out the most important one, the mind.

▪At the present time, in 2016, scientists have the wrong view that consciousness originates in the brain.

▪All scientific theories relating to the mind are based on this wrong hypothesis. However, Buddha Dhamma says not only that the mind is a sense of its own, but it is the most powerful of all six senses.

4. I will first discuss some interesting phenomena that scientists have discovered recently and are currently grappling with many diverse areas of science. Then I will discuss the layout of the brain of humans and animals, and how that information can lead to satisfactory explanations of those phenomena by taking into account the Buddha’s view of the mind as described in Abhidhamma.

▪Instead of using Pāli words to describe Abhidhamma (which can be boring to those who are new to Abhidhamma), my hope is to explain Abhidhamma concepts in the context of such already observed phenomena.

▪Posts on Abhidhamma at, “Abhidhamma.”

Topics in this Section (I have moved a couple of posts from the Dhamma and Science section to here because they discuss possible future discoveries/present misinterpretations in science):

oNeuroscience says there is no Free Will? – That is a Misinterpretation!

oThe Double Slit Experiment – Correlation between Mind and Matter?

oVision (Cakkhu Viññāṇa) is Not Just Seeing

Here is another post from the Abhidhamma section that has a deeper analysis on the brain-mind connection:

oBrain – Interface between Mind and Body