The ‘Happiness Craze’: Lecture Explores Dialogue Between Buddhism and Western Science

In recent years, exchanges between Buddhism and western science have grown “from a trickle to a flood,” says Jamie Hubbard, professor of religion and Yehan Numata Lecturer in Buddhist Studies at Smith.

Examples range from mindfulness techniques taught in workplaces and schools to the Dalai Lama’s “welcome mat” approach to the scientific study of how meditation and other Buddhist practices affect the brain, Hubbard says.

Yet, so far, those exchanges have yet to produce, well, …enlightenment, Hubbard told the audience at his chaired professor lecture in Seelye Hall last week.

“The happiness craze that is sweeping over us” in the West promises nirvana, but fails to answer important questions about Buddhist teachings, noted Hubbard, Smith’s Jill Ker Conway Chair in Religion and East Asian Studies.

Among those questions are whether Buddhist definitions of happiness match those of neuroscience; whether anyone can become perfectly happy in the Buddhist sense; and the meaning of samsara, the cycle of death and rebirth in which a Buddhist pursues the goal of perfect happiness—or Buddhahood, Hubbard said.

Hubbard’s talk, “Buddhism and the Happiness Industry, or What I Learned from Dr. Phil” was the third in a series of chaired professor lectures hosted by the provost’s office.

(The “Dr. Phil” in the title is Smith psychology professor Philip Peake, with whom Hubbard is team teaching a course on happiness this semester.)

The event drew students, faculty and staff from disciplines across the college. Also in the audience were President McCartney and President Emerita Jill Ker Conway, in whose name the chaired professorship was established in 1985.

In introducing Hubbard, who is in his 30^th year of teaching at Smith, Professor of World Religions Carol Zaleski cited Hubbard’s role in helping to establish the college’s Buddhist studies program as “a major center of international renown.”

Hubbard’s own research spans centuries-old Japanese Buddhist texts and modern “Buddhism in cyberspace,” Zaleski said. A lecture series he helped organize this semester is titled “Cyborg Buddha and the New Technologies of Awareness: There’s an App for That!”

In his March 23 talk, Hubbard emphasized that Buddhist definitions of happiness differ markedly from those of western psychology.

Buddhist nirvana “is not the fleeting happiness of finding a good parking spot,” he said, to laughter from the audience.

“Buddhist happiness is lasting,” Hubbard added, a state in which negative emotions, suffering and the cycle of rebirth have been forever eliminated.

Hubbard noted that western psychology is skeptical about the existence of such a “conflict-free” state. “Scientists really have trouble with the idea of the pure Buddha mind,” he said.

As an example, Hubbard quoted from an email exchange he had with his Smith colleague Peake, who argued that without emotions of aversion and attraction, humans would “no longer engage in behaviors to sustain homeostasis, and we would die.”

Although the Dalai Lama has welcomed scientific study of “Buddha mind,” the leader of Tibetan Buddhism has also said there is no reason to believe scientists can measure such a state “because it is not physical, not contingent upon the brain,” Hubbard said.

Where is the dialogue between Buddhism and western science headed?

True to his discipline, Hubbard offered a middle way, asserting that scientific investigation of Buddha mind can yield benefits—but only if deeper questions are addressed.

What Hubbard termed the happiness industry’s focus on “feeling good, not on being good” tends to obscure such questions, he said. Instead, Hubbard urged further study and discussion about how negative emotions can be controlled by practicing Buddhist ethics and “practices of knowing”—especially appropriate, he observed, at a college such as Smith.

Hubbard also emphasized that deeper questions should be asked about Buddhist teachings. “While it’s reasonable to uphold the (Buddhist) ideal of psychological perfection, at some point it is equally reasonable to ask whether that is a realistic idea,” he said.

Audience member Priscilla Liu ’15, a student in Hubbard’s class on happiness, said she found his lecture “unconventional and thought-provoking.”

Hubbard “continues to challenge the possibility of actually achieving nirvana,” said Liu, who is majoring in psychology. “But what makes it more convincing is that he also cites relevant scientific research.”

This year’s final chaired lecture will be given by Dennis Yasutomo, Esther Cloudman Dunn Professor of Government, on Monday, April 13, at 4:30 p.m. in Seelye 106. Yasutomo will speak on “Proactive Pacifism: The Rise of Japan, Part Trois?”