James Austin: 'Zen-Brain Reflections'

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James Austin: 'Zen-Brain Reflections: the Mechanism, Experience and Transformation.'
Delivered at a joint meeting of the Study Society and the Scientific and Medical Network at Colet House, Wednesday March 3rd 2010.

Jim Austin, an American Academic neurologist, found himself in Kyoto Japan over twenty years ago. Realising that Zen produced personal transformation he set out to study the brain mechanisms which underpinned these changes. He worked with a teacher in Japan, spending time in the Zendo and achieved his own Kensho experience. He is Emeritus Professor of Neurology at the University of Colorado and has written three highly acclaimed books including Zen and the Brain, giving the physiological brain mechanisms of the Zen experience and Zen-Brain Reflections, published in 2006, which moves rapidly from this neurological ground into the meaning, poetry and experience of Zen. He has a profound understanding of the neurology through the personal transformation to the wider philosophical experiences of Zen.

3 March 2010, 113 minutes.

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