The present paper considers an intercultural philosophy as a possibility to bridge the gap between Buddhism and modern science. The bridge metaphor, which was common in many Buddhist texts, now becomes popular in the currently emerging philosophical language peculiar to our era of globalization and new possibilities of multicultural education. The author insists upon the fact that today to create both the identity of a person and identity of a group or even identity of a whole society means to be involved at large into different cultural experiences. The latter implies neither hierarchical relationship between them nor mutual exclusion but a genuine complementariness instead. The paper treats a number of such intercultural projects offered in the works of three eminent Russian Buddhist scholars: Theodor Stcherbatskoy (1866-1942), Otton Rosenberg (1888-1919), and Alexander Piatigorsky (1929-2009). In recent years Western neuroscientists and their Russian colleagues demonstrate a great interest in the study of Indian yoga techniques and Buddhist meditation with the methods of modern science. These studies accumulated some undeniable evidence that meditation and mindfulness training affect certain areas of the brain. Any study of meditative practices, the author believes, will be inefficient until Buddhist and Indian theories of consciousness have been taken into serious consideration. Their integration into the struc-ture of modern scientific knowledge in the West is significantly promoted by the cooperation between neuroscientists with philosophers-buddhologists (J. Dunn, G. Dreyfus, geshe Thupten Jinpa, E. Thompson, M. Bitbol, J. Garield and many others). The concepts of Russian philosophers-buddhologists, analyzed in this paper, can also contribute to the development of modern scientific research strategies regarding consciousness.

The global crisis of terrestrial civilization is steadily increasing. A necessary condition for overcoming it is the change in mass consciousness, such negative qualities as irrepressible consumerism, aggressiveness, excessive egoism. As the Dalai Lama emphasizes: “We badly need a fundamental change in human consciousness”. According to him, science is of great importance in solving this problem. In this regard, the results and prospects of modern neuroscience in the study of consciousness, in overcoming the theoretical difficulties that stand in this way are considered. The author proposes an information approach for the theoretical solution of the main issues of the “Consciousness and the Brain” problem and the development of the direction of neuroscience called “Brain Reading” (it deals with deciphering brain codes of psychic phenomena). A necessary condition for these studies is the development of the phenomenology of subjective reality. This involves extensive use of the richest phenomenological and meditative experience of Buddhism. The information approach allows us to theoretically explain the phenomenon of mental causation of the ability to arbitrarily control one’s own consciousness. In this respect, the system of universal ethics, developed by the Dalai Lama, is of exceptional importance. It includes the principles of moral self-perfection, which contribute to “the cultivation of compassion”, “sincere kindness,” and the eradication of “rampant greed and aggression”.

The paper discusses some challenges from meditation studies which might be analyzed within the framework of cultural-historical activity approach in psychology. The special focus of the paper is attention and its status as an independent mental process. This problem produced two classes of attentional theories in the history of psychology: «cause theories» and «effect theories». The two classes of theories are confronted as related to human perceptual activity within the framework of the activity theory proposed by Alexey Leontiev and the physiology of activity developed by Nikolai Bernstein. «Cause theories» and «effect theories» are analyzed both theoretically and in the light of experimental studies of the so-called «attentional blink» phenomenon. This transient attentional error under rapid serial visual presentation conditions, first described 25 years ago, has become a ground for the confrontation of various models and theories of attention. At the same time, it has become an object of the keen interest of meditation and mindfulness researchers. The facts of the attentional blink decrease due to the change of the structure of perceptual activity are compared to the facts of the similar attentional blink decrease after the meditation retreat. The problem of the nature of internal cultural means mediating meditation and mindfulness practices is raised as a result of the whole discussion.

The review analyzes the main content of the reports made at the III International Scientific Conference “The National Environment of Creativity: Time and Transgression”, which was held from June 14 to June 16, 2017 in Saint Petersburg and organized by the Faculty of Humanities of the Saint Petersburg State Economic University in cooperation with the Russian Philosophical Society, Society of Russian Philosophy at the Ukrainian Philosophical Foundation, as well as the Department of Philosophy of Moscow State Institute of International Relations. More than 50 scientists from Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan, which are united by interest in the research field of the transgression and the national environment of creativity, took part in the conference. The review analyzes the ideas expressed at the plenary sessions and at the conference sections: “Metaphysical foundations of the creative process”, “Semantic elements of artistic and aesthetic creativity”, “Creativity in the dimensions of national consciousness and historical elements”. The reports presented at the conference contain the results of studies carried out in the context of the philosophy of creativity and related fields, including political science, sociology, cultural studies, comparative psychology, linguistics and other scientific fields.