Zinn travelled extensively in the Far East in the course of his work and became interested in Buddhist philosophy, publishing
The Global Philosophy in 1971 which was reprinted by Vantage Press of New York in 1984 as a companion volume to his second book,
Phenomena and Noumena, also published by Vantage that year with a foreword by
Colin Blakemore, professor of physiology at the University of Oxford. In the books, Zinn argued that the thought of the
Gautama Buddha, preserved in the
Theravada and taught in Sri Lanka, forms a complete and scientific philosophy, parts of which can be compared to
Immanuel Kant's
phenomena and
noumenon. Zinn argues that the mind is a part of the body, subject to empirical analysis, and rejects the idea of a mystical or spiritual separation between the mind and the brain. In an afterword to
Phenomena and Noumena,
Gerald du Pré, chairman of the Scientific Buddhism Association, summarises Zinn's arguments in favour of a "global philosophy" that would unite science and morality by rejecting mysticism, faith, and spirituality, thus preventing people living in a state of perpetual hypocrisy and confusion created by the conflict between science and faith. Du Pré felt that Zinn was perhaps too harsh in his criticism of the Mahayana school of Buddhism but not fundamentally wrong in his analysis that there was nothing in that school that was not in the
Theravada. ==Later life==