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Zen Brain Horizons: Toward A Living Zen (2014)

Vernon Rowe, Reviewed in the United States on July 12, 2015

Dr. Austin's book is an amazing book. Having become a neurologist myself many years ago because I wanted to find out how the brain works, I had given up on neuroscience and turned to the creative arts, especially poetry, as having more to say about how the mind works than neuroscience, even including psychology and psychiatry. But this book by Dr. Austin comes the closest I've seen so far from a true neuroscientist, incorporating 2500-year-old traditions of Zen with the latest in functional MRI data to summarize, at this point in time, how our brains work. It represents the culmination of a journey beginning with his Chase, Chance, and Creativity. For me, since Zen is poetry, it represents another path to Truth.
Not a quick read, or a quick fix for what ails you, but worth every minute you spend reading and re-reading and re-reading it. Should be required reading for every Neurology and Psychiatry Resident, as well as psychologists, even though it's written for the lay public. This guy is really good.

Meditating Selflessly: Practical Neural Zen  (2011)

Austin's book explains meditative practices from the perspective of a "neural Zen." The latest findings in brain research inform its suggestions. In Meditating Selflessly, James Austin guides readers toward that open awareness already awaiting them on the cushion and in the natural world. Austin offers concrete advice, in a simplified question-and-answer format, about different ways to meditate, and clarifies both the concentrative and receptive styles of meditation. Having emphasized that top-down and bottom-up forms of attention are complementary, he then explains how long-term meditators can become increasingly selfless when they cultivate both styles of attention in a balanced manner.

Selfless Insight: Zen and the Meditative Transformations of Consciousness   (2009)
Dr. Austin has, I believe, explained better than anyone the relationship between human cognition in the Zen Buddhist model and specific brain states in the psychoneurological model. Such an explanation must inherently be anything but lucid. While the terminology of Zen is fraught with technical and often allusive Japanese, Chinese and Sanskrit expressions, today's medical terminology is even less accessible in its density and detailed quantification of values. James H. Austin is uniquely qualified to offer this explanation. As an experienced practitioner of traditional Zen in the Rinzai "sudden enlightenment" school, experienced in and familiar with the core Zen experience of "kensho" - enlightened insight - he knows at once where to look and what to look for in his neurological research. However, there are no quick or easy answers. Detecting patterns of activity among the human brain's billions of neurons and finding significant correlation with the subjective experiences of meditators is bound to be a slow and complex process, deserving of not just one or two but an ongoing series of books. Dr. Austin is further along this path than anyone has ever gone before, and his successes continue, thanks to his rigorous use of scientific method. That doesn't make him easy to read, but fortunately his occasional summations do provide brilliant insights, worth reading for their sake alone

Zen Brain Reflections    (2006)

Chase, Chance and Creativity: The Lucky Art of Novelty  (2003)

Reviewed in the United States on September 29, 2005 by H. Charles Romesburg
For more than ten years I taught a research design course to graduate students at Utah State University, and to help them understand how scientists create hypotheses I made Austin's (a nationally awarded researcher) "Chase, Chance, & Creativity" assigned reading, along with other books and journal articles on hypothesis creation. Consistently they reported that his book helped them most and is on par with good novels in being hard to put down. As for me, I believe "C, C,& C" will help people in all fields (artists, inventors, entrepreneurs) be more creative. I'll go so far as say to its publisher that it'll be a service to civilization to keep it in print forever.

Zen and The Brain: Toward an Understanding of Meditation and Consciousness  (1998)
Aldous Huxley called humankind's basic trend toward spiritual growth the "perennial philosophy." In the view of James Austin, the trend implies a "perennial psychophysiology" -- because awakening, or enlightenment, occurs only when the human brain undergoes substantial changes. What are the peak experiences of enlightenment? How could these states profoundly enhance, and yet simplify, the workings of the brain? Zen and the Brain presents the latest evidence. In this book Zen Buddhism becomes the opening wedge for an extraordinarily wide-ranging exploration of consciousness. In order to understand which brain mechanisms produce Zen states, one needs some understanding of the anatomy, physiology, and chemistry of the brain. Austin, both a neurologist and a Zen practitioner, interweaves the most recent brain research with the personal narrative of his Zen experiences. The science is both inclusive and rigorous; the Zen sections are clear and evocative

Realizing Awakened Consciousness., Columbia Univ Press, June 2015  by Peter R Boyle, an Interview with Dr Austin:
Boyle returns to the work of James Austin and acknowledges that current understanding of the interaction between social reality and the brain is limited but that Austin’s two brain system model may provide the key to understanding awakened consciousness, positing that ordinary consciousness is found within the egocentric processing systems while the allocentric system is where awakened consciousness resides, with the two separate, specialised brain systems usually in poor communication. Improving this communication would allow an individual, or groups to inhabit perceptual experience outside the social reality and social self that they have identified with. Rather than the non-symbolic acting as a permanent refuge in which the awakened person inhabits, the two consciousnesses would interact.