tions, which do not value the renunciation or the de-
nial of desire.
However, some Buddhist doctrinal positions deviate
in varying degrees from the above characterization. Im-
portant currents within the Chan and Tantric traditions
qualify their understanding of renunciation (or are
openly critical of the denial of desire) and tend to fo-
cus on the problems of self-deception and the tyranny
of conceptual constructs and dualities, including the
duality between desire and desirelessness, holy and
mundane. Nonetheless, even these traditions tend to
preserve monastic institutions and practices that draw
a boundary between the transcendence of duality of the
religious specialist and the need to negotiate dualities
and ambivalences in lay life. In this context, acceptance
of desire appears to be a stepping stone in the direction
of a different form of desirelessness, and not necessar-
ily an acceptance of our instinctual drives in the sense
that the West has come to conceive of it after the psy-
choanalytic revolution.
An ambiguous acceptance of desire may be postu-
lated in the case of the Chan tradition, where despite
its iconoclastic rhetoric of immediacy and nonduality,
a strict ethos of self-control and unrelenting effort
points at least toward a transcendence of individual
will (pace radical or mad monks like the fifteenth-
century Japanese Zen monk IKKYU). In TANTRA, where
desire is to be transformed rather than abandoned, the
transformation is framed in ritual and symbolic con-
texts that can hardly be assimilated into contemporary
notions of the tolerance of strong affect and intrapsy-
chic conflict (such framing occurs even in the radical
antinomian rhetoric of the Caryaglti). In both tradi-
tions it may be more accurate to speak of a paradoxi-
cal inversion of the normal order of ascetic denial, but
not of an acceptance of desire as conceived in the more
common contemporary assumptions about psycho-
logical well-being.
Nonetheless, much needs to be explored if we are
to be able to understand the significance of the in-
sights offered by Buddhist concepts of self-deception
and delusion. Such insights include the recognition of
a connection between suffering and misuses of lan-
guage and conceptual labeling, as well as the obsessive
quality of unawareness or error. These are elements
suggested, for instance, by the speculations of the
Madhyamaka school, where desire and unawareness
seem to coalesce in the concept of obstinate dwelling
in error (abhinives ́a). This idea of an inertia that fa-
vors a persistent dwelling in distorted perception
seems to echo Western concepts like those of neurotic
paradox and the repetition compulsion.
The above digressions suggest that much remains
to be understood, not only about the history of Bud-
dhist understanding of desire and its obstinate cling-
ing to imagined objects, but also about the
implications of variations within Buddhism. It is not
at all clear, for instance, that we are yet in a position
to understand the psychological implications (or for
that matter, the health valence) of the full spectrum of
Buddhist attitudes toward cognition and emotion, and
the role of ethical and contemplative discipline in the
relief of distress.
Perhaps as an attempt to circumvent some of the
above difficulties, some researchers have looked at only
one narrow cross section of Buddhist practice by
studying selected meditative states. In the last quarter
of the twentieth century, researchers investigated the
effects of meditation practice on psychophysiological
states. Using contemporary physiological and psycho-
logical measures, Japanese researchers established a
connection between Zen meditation and neural and
physiological states associated with rested, wakeful at-
tention (Kasamatsu and Hirai 1966; Hirai 1978 and
1989). Subsequent studies have confirmed and ex-
panded on their results (summarized in Murphy and
Donovan).
The most interesting and robust result of these stud-
ies was the accumulation of evidence that showed that
meditation is not a type of hypnosis, catalepsy, or a
“catatonic state,” as had been proposed earlier in the
twentieth century. By measuring the brain waves of
meditators, these experimenters determined that the
brain of a subject in deep meditation (especially, but
not exclusively, an experienced meditator) emits pat-
terns of alpha and theta waves that are distinct from
those emitted by subjects that were anxious, under
hypnosis, or in deep sleep. This result of electroen-
cephalographic (EEG) measurements suggests that the
meditator is in fact in a state of “calm awareness,” as
claimed by Buddhist tradition. Subsequent MRI and
SPECT studies suggest similar conclusions (Newberg
et al.).
These investigations suggest that meditation tech-
niques affect the body as well as the mind, lowering,
for instance, blood pressure and galvanic skin pressure.
The studies also confirm something noted by the tra-
dition: The obvious importance of the body does not
diminish the importance of the mind; a particular wayPSYCHOLOGY