Are these claims regarding the brain consistent with the current scientific consensus?
In *Approaching the Buddhist Path*, His Holiness the Dalai Lama puts forward the following 4 claims.
I’m wondering if these claims represent (or are consistent with) the broad consensus. Here they are (and thanks in advance!);
“\[By\] simply looking at chemical processes in the brain, we cannot determine if a thought is valid— if it is an instance of knowledge or affliction.”
“By examining brain processes we cannot discern whether a mental event is a direct perceiver of a sense object, or a conception (a memory or thought about something).”
“At the experiential level, there is a great difference between the pain we experience due to our own situation and the pain that comes from compassion for others’ suffering. The experience of our own pain arises involuntarily and forcefully, and we usually respond to it with fear and anger. The pain that is attendant upon compassion for another’s suffering has an element of deliberate sharing and embracing of that pain, and we react to it with courage. *However, in terms of the biochemical processes in the brain, these two types of pain are indistinguishable”* (emphasis mine).
“Tears can well up on our eye when we are joyful or very sad. On the physical level, our eyes do not distinguish the two. But on a mental level, there is a big difference the cause of the tears and how we experience them.”