Here is the latest in Salon's "Atoms and Eden" series on science and religion. (Not the latest, actually, but the interviews with Dawkins and Dennett would be redundant to the discussions here.) B. Alan Wallace discusses the relationship of modern science and Buddhism and their commensurability. Salon is a subscription site, so you'll have to watch a brief ad to read the article, but it's relatively painless.
One of the interesting things he discusses is how Buddhism can account for the transfer of consciousness from one body to another (actually called 'rebirth' rather than 'reincarnation'; the latter requires an essence, which Buddhism usually denies).
I wish the interview had spent some time on the relationship of Buddhism with science outside of neurology. Although Wallace says that there are instances of transcendence in Buddhist theology, my understanding -- and I think Wallace has said the same thing in his work -- is that Buddhists tend to take a non-realist view of scientific phenomena without being reductionist. I think this to be a rather curious view, but one to which most non-Theravadan Buddhists would be committed.
I wanted to comment on something which is not connected with the above article.I want to talk about the practice of Bodhicitta.
In Tibetan Buddhism the cultivation of Bodhichitta is of great importance. I am not sure how far is it true of all the Buddhist schools or whether this was known by this name in the earliest schools but it seems to me that a Bodhicitta practice has to be an oxymoron. Is it possible for anyone to cultivate compassion? Can one bring about a compassionate state of mind by practice? This seems to me to be contradictory. When I first heard of this practice I was genuinely puzzled about it. I had heard of meditative practices, awareness practices, concentration practices but never of a practice of compassion. It is demeaning of compassion to be created through practice. I have not been able to reconcile myself to this doctrine to this day. I consider it to be essentially flawed. Like several other Buddhist doctrines which I find a little shaky in its foundations ,this one strikes me as the shakiest of all. What is even more surprising is the non questioning acquiescenece of its practitioners. I suspect that the attitude of most of the practitioners of Buddhism or any religion is to brush aside their suspicion about whatever aspect of religion they find not very reasonable. But this practice is the most bizarre of all. I cannot imagine any person who will not feel a certain puzzlement when first told about it. It’s just that we tend to disregard our feelings about matters which are ancient. I believe it would have struck as something odd to ancients as well. Mind you what is odd about this doctrine is not the doctrine itself but the word practice attached to it. Of course everyone will agree that it is highly important for one to have a compassionate and enlightened mind. It is just that this enlightened mind is supposed to be a culmination of a practice not a practice in itself.. I am sure my opponents will jump up against this assertion by claiming that that is where the whole problem lies when I think of the result as being separate from a practice as a state to be attained in future. That will again be an example of unthinking acceptance of certain very illogical ways of presenting spirituality by some teachers preeminent of them being J krishnamurti along with some others who in some way or the other are thought of as Buddhist specially of the Zen school.
I am not sure if such a practice has been mentioned in the original texts of Buddhism. All I am saying is that the phrase bodhicitta practice seen in the light of what Bodhicitta means would be synonymous with scientist practice, or mathematician practice in which case both these phrases would certainly be meaningless. A mathematician becomes a mathematician by virtue of doing math not by practicing towards becoming a mathematician. In a similar way a man is enlightened or has a Bodhicitta mind by virtue of the state of mind he is in, the thoughts that he thinks, the acts he does, the feelings he has and not because he is practicing enlightenment. There seems to be both a linguistic problem with it as well as a real every day problem with carrying it out in life. It is just amazing that no one has written much about it.