Buddhism, Psychology and Neuroscience

Buddhism, Psychology and Neuroscience

Part I: Compassion

POSTED JANUARY 24, 2019

Over the past three decades, a series of conferences have introduced the idea of a convergence between Buddhism and neuroscience. Psychologists, psychotherapists and neuroscientists have noted significant overlaps between their findings and the ancient teachings. Among the areas where these conjunctions have been seen are the concept of the "ego", mindfulness and compassion.

Part I: Compassion

The Mind & Life Institute pioneered work in this area. Mind & Life emerged in 1987 from a meeting of three visionaries: Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama — the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people and a global advocate for compassion; Adam Engle, a lawyer and entrepreneur; and Francisco Varela, a neuroscientist. Its mission is "to alleviate suffering and promote flourishing by integrating science with contemplative practice and wisdom traditions". Their website has a plethora of blog posts as well as abstracts of the Mind and Life Dialogues - many with videos of these conferences. Below is the abstract from the 2010 conference, "Altruism and Compassion in Economic Systems."

Another early actor is neuroscientist Richard Davidson, founder of the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. In 1992, Davidson got a challenge from the Dalai Lama. when he visited the Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader at his residence in Dharamsala, India. “He said: ‘You’ve been using the tools of modern neuroscience to study depression, and anxiety, and fear. Why can’t you use those same tools to study kindness and compassion?’ … I did not have a very good answer. I said it was hard.” The result was that "not long afterward, Davidson brought a series of Buddhist monks into his lab and strapped electrodes to their heads or treated them to a few hours in an MRI machine." Davidson and his colleagues found something remarkable: the monks' MRI readings were "indicative of plasticity”—meaning that those brains were more capable of change, for example, in theory, of becoming more resilient."

The researchers also found in MRI scans of monks that a region of the brain known as the anterior insula was activated, where a lot of brain-body coordination takes place. “The systems in the brain that support our well-being are intimately connected to different organ systems in our body, and also connected to the immune and endocrine systems in ways that matter for our health,” he said. The brain scans showed that “compassion is a kind of state that involves the body in a major way.”

After additional research, Davidson has concluded that the "best way to activate positive-emotion circuits in the brain is through generosity...that the best way for us to be happy is to be generous to others. And in fact the scientific evidence is in many ways bearing this out, and showing that there are systematic changes in the brain that are associated with acts of generosity.” (The Atlantic, July 4, 2015)

Buddhism, Psychology and Neuroscience

Part II: Mindfulness "Be Here Now"

POSTED FEBRUARY 5, 2019

Part II: Mindfulness

Mindfulness, a concept rooted in both Buddhist and Hindu meditative traditions, captured the attention of many in the generation coming of age in the Sixties. The catch phrase then was "Be Here Now." There was even a book, or perhaps several, with that title. Mine was a paperback with dark blue covers and an exotic diagram on the front. It's still selling today and there's an image of it below. The book's authors are Ram Dass and Richard Alpert, and they were writing from the Hindu meditative tradition.

Mindfulness is the process of bringing one's attention to experiences occurring in the present moment. Mindful.org defines it as "the basic human ability to be fully present, aware of where we are and what we’re doing, and not overly reactive or overwhelmed by what’s going on around us."

Western science is catching up with Eastern philosophical and religious traditions, and mindfulness meditation is now considered a cognitive behavioral therapy. Among the most common health benefits of mindfulness, according to the Positive Psychology website are:

Decreased Stress

By inducing a state of relaxation and alleviating stress, mindfulness can lead to "higher brain functioning, increased immune function, lowered blood pressure, lowered heart rate, increased awareness, increased attention and focus, increased clarity in thinking and perception. lowered anxiety levels, an experience of being calm and internally still and an experience of feeling connected."

Enhanced Ability to Deal with Illness

"Perhaps one of the most studied groups in terms of the impacts of mindfulness is cancer patients and others who are suffering from chronic or potentially terminal illness. Mindfulness may not take away their symptoms, but it can help make them more manageable."

Facilitation of Recovery

"Mindfulness can not only help you deal with a chronic or potentially terminal illness or life-threatening event, it can also help you recover from it....A study of MBSR (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction) in Chinese breast cancer survivors provided evidence that mindfulness can enhance post-traumatic growth and decrease stress and anxiety in cancer patients (Zhang, Zhou, Feng, Fan, Zeng, & Wei, 2017)."

Decreased Depressive Symptoms

"Mindfulness has long been considered an effective supplemental treatment for depression. It has been found to decrease depressive symptoms, anxiety, and stress in college students, as well as increasing self-compassion when compared with yoga alone (Falsafi, 2016).

Improved general health

For example, a study of how mindfulness impacts health behaviors found that practicing mindfulness can enhance or increase multiple behaviors related to health, like getting regular health check-ups, being physically active, using seat belts, and avoiding nicotine and alcohol (Jacobs, Wollny, Sim, & Horsch, 2016)....Additionally, mindfulness has been positively linked with lower blood pressure, especially when the practitioner is skilled in nonjudging and nonreactivity (Tomfohr, Pung, Mills, & Edwards, 2015).

Besides the physical and mental health benefits, the mindbodygreen website notes that mindfulness meditation can have a positive effect on our emotional well-being and connect better with others.

"1. [Mindfulness meditation] "allows us to tap into our awareness and creates space in our minds. It enables us to let go of our ego and struggles and makes space for healing, creativity, stillness, intuition and connection to our spirit.

2. It helps us to get in touch with our emotions. If we listen to what is going on inside we won’t under-react of over-react. Meditation allows you to spend more time in your own company and take time to sit and pay attention to how you’re feeling without thoughts and judgment...

3. Meditation allows us to feel more empathy without getting lost in the outside world. We listen better, understand more and connect on a deeper level.

4. Excessive thinking takes us out of the present. Meditation brings your attention to the present moment. It prevents you from living in the past or worrying about the future. Plan for the future, but live in the moment.

5. Meditation allows you to let go of anything that limits possibilities. It gives you confidence, courage and the ability to trust yourself and block out impressionable thoughts. It keeps you grounded and centered – less pushed by what’s going on around you. Your intuition becomes clearer about what is right for you."

Mindfulness Meditation

Mindfulness can be developed through the practice of mindfulness meditation and other methods such as yoga. Mindful.org emphasizes that "Mindfulness is not obscure or exotic - it’s familiar to us because it’s what we already do, how we already are... We already have the capacity to be present, and it doesn’t require us to change who we are." They provide us with the following "posture practice" that can be used as the beginning stage of a period of meditation practice or simply as something to do for a minute, maybe to stabilize yourself and find a moment of relaxation before going back into the fray."

1. Take your seat. Whatever you’re sitting on—a chair, a meditation cushion, a park bench—find a spot that gives you a stable, solid seat, not perching or hanging back.

2. Notice what your legs are doing. If on a cushion on the floor, cross your legs comfortably in front of you. (If you already do some kind of seated yoga posture, go ahead.) If on a chair, it’s good if the bottoms of your feet are touching the floor.

3. Straighten—but don’t stiffen— your upper body. The spine has natural curvature. Let it be there. Your head and shoulders can comfortably rest on top of your vertebrae.

4. Situate your upper arms parallel to your upper body. Then let your hands drop onto the tops of your legs. With your upper arms at your sides, your hands will land in the right spot. Too far forward will make you hunch. Too far back will make you stiff. You’re tuning the strings of your body—not too tight and not too loose.

5. Drop your chin a little and let your gaze fall gently downward. You may let your eyelids lower. If you feel the need, you may lower them completely, but it’s not necessary to close your eyes when meditating. You can simply let what appears before your eyes be there without focusing on it.

6. Be there for a few moments. Relax. Now get up and go about your day. And if the next thing on the agenda is doing some mindfulness practice by paying attention to your breath or the sensations in your body, you’ve started off on the right foot—and hands and arms and everything else.

7. Begin again. When your posture is established, feel your breath—or some say “follow” it—as it goes out and as it goes in. (Some versions of the practice put more emphasis on the outbreath, and for the inbreath you simply leave a spacious pause.) Inevitably, your attention will leave the breath and wander to other places. When you get around to noticing this—in a few seconds, a minute, five minutes—return your attention to the breath. Don’t bother judging yourself or obsessing over the content of the thoughts. Come back. You go away, you come back.

8. That’s it. That’s the practice. It’s often been said that it’s very simple, but it’s not necessarily easy. The work is to just keep doing it. Results will accrue.

Below right is a link to mindfulness.org's beginner's breathing practice.

Buddhism, Psychology and Neuroscience

Part III: The Ego and the "Not-Self"

POSTED FEBRUARY 19, 2019

Part III: The Ego and the "Not-Self"

A difficult Buddhist concept to understand - for me, at least - is the teaching of "anatta", or "not-self". It follows from the basic Buddhist concept of impermanence, that everything is in a constant state of change. "Anatta" rejects the idea that there is a core permanent self that is unchanging - i.e, it rejects that our "selfhood" is intrinsically the same today as it was when we first developed the sense of the self as toddlers. Buddhists suggest that this is just an illusion—a philosophy that’s increasingly supported by scientific research.

Evan Thompson, a philosophy of mind professor at the University of British Columbia, tells Quartz [link below left], “Buddhists argue that nothing is constant, everything changes through time, you have a constantly changing stream of consciousness,...And from a neuroscience perspective, the brain and body are constantly in flux. There’s nothing that corresponds to the sense that there’s an unchanging self.”

One's first reaction to this may be, "What? We have no Ego?" or, perhaps, "So what?" But the application of the idea to our lives can have significant value.

I think it's not saying that we have no ego, rather that we can train it to be more flexible, to be able to let go of some of the things the ego drives us to.

Psychiatrist Mark Epstein writes that the full nuance of 'egolessness' is not to be completely without ego, but to doubt the story that it tells you. "For many people [the ego] stays in a kind of immature place," he says. Your ego has been your constant companion throughout life, but was there some point at which it stopped growing? "Maybe some of those fixed ideas that have been operating inside of you since you were a little kid and conditioning the way you interact with other people, with the world, maybe those are not all so right. Maybe you’re not as "really real" as you think you are, and you could start to let go of some of that a little bit."

Buddhist psychology and Western psychotherapy both hold out hope for a more flexible ego, one that does not pit the individual against everyone else in a futile attempt to gain total surety. Both Siddhartha Gautama and Sigmund Freud "identified the untrammeled ego as the limiting factor in our well-being. As different as these two individuals were, they came to a virtually identical conclusion. When we let the ego have free rein, we suffer. But when it learns to let go, we are free....there is no reason for the untutored ego to hold sway over our lives, no reason for a permanently selfish agenda to be our bottom line. The very ego whose fears and attachments drive us is also capable of a profound and far-reaching development. We have the capacity, as conscious and self-reflecting individuals, to talk back to the ego. Instead of focusing solely on success in the external world, we can direct ourselves to the internal one.

Aimee Kuvadia adds, "This reality that nothing stays the same should be liberating, because if people believe it, they’ll no longer define themselves by their thoughts or be limited by a fixed idea of who they are. Their possibilities will be endless. Buddhist Monks have known for thousands of years what science is just now learning: the mind can be changed by training it. Neuroplasticity, as it’s called, endows people with the ability to grow and evolve, triumphing over bad habits and becoming more like the individuals they want to be."