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Longevity, Regeneration, and Optimal Health: Integrating Eastern and Western Perspectives.
William C. Bushell (Editor), Erin L. Olivio (Editor), Neil D. Theise (Editor)
ISBN: 978-1-57331-677-4
Paperback, 352 pages
June 2010, Wiley-Blackwell

Продолжу перевод второй статьи из этой же книги со стр. 5, выложенной в открытом доступе.
Toward a Unified Field of Study: Longevity, Regeneration, and Protection of Health through Meditation and Related Practices.
William C. Bushell and Neil D. Theise.
Anthropology Program, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
Departments of Pathology and of Medicine, Beth Israel Medical Center of Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York, New York, USA.
The orientation of this volume and the Longevity and Optimal Health: Integrating Eastern and Western Perspectives conference is that there is abundant evidence in the scientific and medical literatures that the diligent practice of certain yoga-meditational regimens can lead to a spectrum of health enhancements, ranging from modest to profound, and that these can be investigated in a scientifically rigorous fashion. This overview will summarize these possibilities regarding improved human longevity, regeneration, and protection of health and serve to introduce the perspectives of conference participants from all of the traditions represented.
William C. Bushell и Neil D. Theise. Adress for correspondence: William C, Buhell, Ph.D., Anthropology Program, Massacheits Institute of Technology, 77 Masachuetis Avenue, Bldg 16-267, Cambridge, MA 02139 wbushell@mit.edu
The orientation of this volume and the conference from which it derives, Longevity and Optimal Health: Integrating Eastern and Western Perspectives, is meant to be at once bold and scientifically rigorous. Bold, because the Eastern perspectives specifically the extensive, longstanding, and highly developed yoga systems of Asia, including India and Tibet - claim that there is evidence that the diligent practice of certain yoga-meditational regimens can lead to a spectrum of health enhancements, ranging from modest to profound. Scientifically rigorous because any important claims must be subjected to the highest standards of assessment of truth. The latter principle is a basic - if not always observed - foundational principle of the history of Western, or more accurately, in sociohistorical terms, cosmopolitan science, as it also is, in its own form of empirical-experimental-logical criteria, within the Eastern scientific systems of mind-body practice known as yoga.
Many of us have come to feel that this principle of commitment to the truth is embodied in His Holiness the Dalai Lama of Tibet, as exemplified in key, seminal statements such as this one: “My confidence in venturing into (“Western”) science lies in my basic belief that as in science so in Buddhism, understanding the nature of reality is pursued by means of critical investigation: if scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims.” [Gyatso, T. (H. H. the Dalai Lama). 2005. The Universe in an Atom; The convergense of Sciense and Spirituality. Morgan Road Books. New York]. Let us take this position to be our foundation in what follows in this volume and in the enterprises that have arisen and will arise from this and other seminal conferences and initiatives, and examinc the claims of the yoga meditation traditions in an open yet rigorous spirit and program of future research.
The stage of these endeavors in which we now find ourselves is new; even if claims may seem to be dramatic, we (the authors of this overview) believe that there already exists, at least, a critical minimum of evidence that is supportive enough to warrant a critical review, as well as further investigation. Of course, at the same time, the more radical the claims are, the more rigorous must be the scrutiny they receive. The claims of these traditions, at least for the potential that may be realized by advanced virtuoso practitioners of these regimens, are in fact radical, and from the present scientific perspective potentially revolutionary.
Some of the scientists represented in the stellar group that met with H.H. the Dalai Lama at this conference, are currently pursuing follow up research in response to questions and issues raised at the conference. The work of many of this group already possesses potentially revolutionary implications in the life sciences, specifically with regard to the potential for the enhancement of human health and functioning, as will be seen below. Also to be seen bellow, is a description of the potential common ground of these two perspectives, the Eastern (or, more accurately multicultural) and Western (or cosmopolitan).
We will now survey some of the key recent Western scientific developments represented by the work of these scientists and others in order to sketch out the background for consideration of the claims of the Eastern yogic traditions. The same organizational framework of the subject matter used in the conference is adapted for the volume, keeping in mind that these categories, of course, overlap in ways that vill be discussed below. This framework was developed for the conceptual organization of the conference and this associated volume and was meant to offer an heuristic foundation for communication, integration, and understanding of the broad range of relevant and significant concepts. The primary categories of this framework are longevity, regeneration, protection, and optimization of health and functioning, as well as general issues of methodology. Optimization is considered separately in the concluding paper of this volume, and issues of methodology are considered throughout the introductory and concluding papers, as well as most if not all be discussed below. This framework was developed for the conceptual organization of the conference and this associated volume and was meant to offer an heuristic foundation for communication, integration, and understanding of the broad range of relevant and significant concepts. The primary categories of this framework arc longevity, regeneration, protection, and optimization of health and functioning, as well as general issues of methodology. Optimization is considered separately in the concluding paper of this volume, and issues of methodology are considered throughout the introductory and concluding papers, as well as most if not all the papers of this volume.
The work of keeping up with developments in any one single field in medical science is becoming increasingly daunting, and the difficulty is amplified in any attempt at achieving a meaningful multidisciplinary perspective.
Recent statistics in bioinformation science reveal that approximately 10,000 new citations are generated in the official medical database of the National Institutes of Health every week (see concluding paper of this volume). When considering not only a multidisciplinary perspective, but a cross-traditional, i.e., an “East-West” perspective along with that multidisciplinary perspective, there is of course even further amplification of the challenges. Yet even a moderately informed investigation of commonalities, common ground, of these traditions proves fruitful, as pioneering publications of H.H. the Dalai Lama with the Mind and Life group (see www.mindandlife.org for list of publications), with Professor Robert Thurman [Gyatso, T. (H.H. the Dalai Lama). 1991. MindSciense; An East-West Dialogue (Proceedings of Symposium of the Mind/Body Medical Institute of Harvard Medical School). Wisdom. Boston] and with others, attest. Moreover, I believe that, as will also be seen below, even in the existing literatures of East and West there is, to quote in this special context the pioneering bioinformatics researcher, D.R. Swanson, “a vast mosaic of undiscovered connections,” a wealth of existing, but as yet “undiscovered public knowledge, waiting to be mined [Swanson, D.R., Smalheiser & A. Bookstein. 1977. Information discovery from complimentary literatures: a stimulus to scientific discovery. Artificial Intelligence 91: 183-203.]. We intend this framework for the following discussion of the existing but largely unconnected data and knowledge to be regarded in a manner similar to die use of the term “framework” by Francis Crick and Cristof Koch in their recent seminal article, “A framework for consciousness”:
A framework is not a detailed hypothesis or set of hypotheses; rather it is a suggested point of view for an attack on a scientific problem, often suggesting testable hypotheses. ... A good framework is one that sounds reasonably plausible relative to available scientific data and that turns out to be largely correct. It is unlikely to be correct in all the details. A framework often contains unstated (and often unrecognized) assumptions, but this is unavoidable [Crick, F. & C. Koch. 2003. A framework for consciousness. Nat. Neurosci. 6: 119-126.].
Although humility will fortunately prevent us from asserting that our framework is “largely correct,” we hope that a powerful motivation for the pursuit of such an extraordinarily important set of subjects will propel us in the direction of accuracy, and at the same time away from unstated and unrecognized assumptions.
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