Mind and Life Europe
Symposium for Contemplative Studies

]]> http://www.mindandlife.org/mind-and-life-europe-symposium-for-contemplative-studies/feed/ 0 http://www.mindandlife.org/contemplative-practice-treatments-for-post-traumatic-stress/ http://www.mindandlife.org/contemplative-practice-treatments-for-post-traumatic-stress/#comments Tue, 21 May 2013 16:46:13 +0000 Tom http://www.mindandlife.org/?p=8558

Two weeks ago, U.S. Army veteran Stephen Lee described in a Huffington Post interview how his participation in a meditation study helped him work with the anger and anxiety he was suffering as a result of post-traumatic stress. Lee is featured in Free the Mind, a new documentary about the brain, neuroscience, and meditation.

Recent research suggests that contemplative practices may be helpful in alleviating some of the torment caused by post-traumatic stress, in particular that of combat veterans and civilians in postwar regions.

Last April, a team from the University of Michigan’s Department of Psychiatry published a pilot study in the journal Depression and Anxiety showing that “veterans with PTSD who completed an 8-week mindfulness-based group treatment plan showed a significant reduction in symptoms as compared to patients who underwent treatment as normal.”

The treatment plan included the use of MBCT, or mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, which combines standard forms of cognitive therapy with a more contemplative, meditative, or mindful approach that stresses “an increased awareness of all thoughts and emotions.”

A Science Daily article written about the pilot study says “previous research has shown stress reduction classes that use mindfulness meditation have been beneficial to people with a history of trauma exposure – including veterans, civilians with war-related trauma, and adults with a history of childhood sexual abuse – but the new study is the first to examine the effect of mindfulness-based psychotherapy for PTSD with veterans in a PTSD clinic.”

Other psychotherapy programs that have demonstrated some efficacy in alleviating PTSD symptoms include different variants of exposure therapy, and a type of therapy known as eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR). However, PTSD treatments are seen by some as controversial, and a 2010 meta-analysis in Clinical Psychology Review questions the efficacy of these treatments, and points out methodological flaws in the studies and previous meta-analyses.

Despite ongoing debates about study design and types of interventions, the American Psychiatric Association, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the U.S. Department of Defense, and several international bodies have recommended EMDR and CBT in particular as effective treatment strategies for the alleviation of post-traumatic stress. Such associations and departments may begin recommending treatment plans that incorporate contemplative practices if studies continue to suggest positive effects.

A 2008 study published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, for example, set out to determine whether participation in a mind-body skills program could decrease symptoms of PTSD in a group of postwar Kosovar adolescents. The group program was based on psychological self-care, mind-body techniques such as meditation and breathing techniques, and self-expression exercises, and was administered to 82 adolescents meeting criteria for PTSD according to the Harvard Trauma Questionnaire. Students in the intervention group had significantly lower PTSD symptom scores following intervention than those in the wait-list control group.

Further, a 2013 literature review published in the Journal of Investigative Medicine surveyed a number of academic databases in order to identify the effects of mind-body interventions – such as yoga, tai chi, qigong, mindfulness-based stress reduction, meditation, and deep breathing – as interventions for PTSD. The literature search used the databases PubMed, PsycINFO, and Published International Literature on Traumatic Stress, which resulted in 92 articles, only 16 of which were deemed suitable for inclusion in the review.

Findings from the 16 publications “suggest that mind-body practices are associated with positive impacts on PTSD symptoms. Mind-body practices incorporate numerous therapeutic effects on stress responses, including reduction in anxiety, depression, and anger, and increases in pain tolerance, self-esteem, energy levels, ability to relax, and ability to cope with stressful situations. In general, mind-body practices were found to be a viable intervention to improve the constellation of PTSD symptoms such as intrusive memories, avoidance, and increased emotional arousal.”

Likewise, Dr. Anthony P. King, the lead author of the pilot study from the University of Michigan, says that one of the most noticeable areas of improvement for combat veterans suffering from PTSD was a reduction in “avoidance symptoms.” One of the central objectives of mindfulness meditation and therapy is an attempt to develop sustained focus on thoughts and memories, even ones that may be unpleasant.

King says “part of the psychological process of PTSD often includes avoidance and suppression of painful emotions and memories, which allows symptoms of the disorder to continue… through the mindfulness intervention, however, we found that many of our patients were able to stop this patter of avoidance and see an improvement in their symptoms.” Patients in the mindfulness group also experienced a decrease in feelings of guilt, self-blame, shame, and a trend towards decreased perception of the world as a dangerous place, in part because “mindfulness techniques also emphasize focus and attention to positive experiences and nonjudgmental acceptance to one’s thoughts and emotions.”

Though such studies and literature reviews are encouraging, further studies with larger sample sizes and rigorous designs are needed to fully explore the implications of introduction contemplative practices to the treatment of posttraumatic stress. It remains to be seen whether such practices can function as independent interventions for treating avoidance and other symptoms of anxiety, or whether they should be considered a complement to existing treatments such as cognitive-behavioral therapies and EMDR.

When Buddhist-based contemplative practices burgeoned in popularity in the United States and Europe during the 1950s and 60s, its central tenets were often disregarded in university department as New Age frivolity. Departments of Religion and Philosopy made some allowances for their study, but the same open-mindedness rarely occurred in “respectable” laboratories of Psychology, Cognitive Science, or Neuroscience.

Since then, a major shift has occurred, and the question is no longer about the scientific value of contemplative studies but instead focused on how they should be implemented. Should public schools be teaching meditation? Should prisons? Corporations? Why or why not? What are the major differences, if any, between learning how to meditate in a Zen center versus being taught mindfulness by a human resources manager? And what about the military?

In 2012, Mind and Life hosted a panel discussion at the International Symposium for Contemplative Studies titled The Ethics of Teaching Contemplative Practices to the Armed Forces. The panel discussed whether such practices could (or should) be introduced to individuals or institutions directly involved in violent activities. It’s a nuanced ethical quandary, which is often reduced to two perspetives: the first believes that everyone ultimately benefits from such practices, regardless of context, while the other maintains that the practices are tools prone to misuse outside of a nonviolent, prosocial framework.

In other words, if you believe that these practices grant everybody equanimity and insight into the nature of universal suffering, then you might support bringing contemplation to soldiers. If, on the other hand, you believe contemplative practices can enhance attention and emotional resilience in support of questionable goals, you may find its practice in war zones to be deeply flawed.

In 1997, American author Brian Victoria made a major contribution to this debate with his book Zen at War. The book describes the “bastardization” of Zen philosophy during World War II when the philosophy was used to revive in Japanese soldiers the “warrior culture established by the early shoguns.” Sawaki Kodo, a Japanese Soto Zen patriarch who had served on the Russian front, made it clear to military leaders that “if killing is done without thinking, in a state of no-mind or no-self, then the act is an expression of enlightenment.” After the book’s publication, Zen leaders and groups in Japan and the U.S. disseminated apologies to shocked practitioners and scholars who felt betrayed by this application of Zen beliefs.

The self-denying egolessness prized by Zen and related schools refers back to the Buddhist concept of anatta, or no-self. Anatta is often understood as the idea that there is no enduring or fixed entity; that there is nothing permanent associated with the mind or body that exists during life or after death. Instead, we exist in a perpetual state of groundless “becoming.” Buddhist thinkers tend to question or outright reject the existence of a soul or independently existing “I,” and deny a permanent individual essence.

Victoria’s book describes how Japanese military trainers developed the self-denying egolessness anatta describes – and that Zen prizes – into a form of “fascist mind-control.” Through it, they justified collective martyrdom, and by romanticizing the connection between Zen and the samurai’s warrior ethos, they validated the killing of enemies. The trainers also emphasized a link between Buddhist notions of compassion and the deliverance of a swift, merciful death. Coupled with practiced focus and attention training, this type of military training produced highly motivated, “in-the-zone” soldiers able to overcome fear and disregard the threat of imminent death. According to Victoria, “in Zen, there was the promise that there was no difference between life and death, so you really haven’t lost anything.”

Dr. Elizabeth Stanley of Georgetown University is one researcher implementing meditation in the military. Her program – Mindfulness-Based Fitness Training (MMFT) – is a multi-week mental health training tested in both military and civilian populations. For Stanley, war has become an important, appropriate research setting for mindfulness for two reasons.

The first stems from a concern over the mental health of soldiers.

There is a very real demand for, and grossly lacking supply of, mental health care for veterans: 30-50 percent of returning National Guard reservists, soldiers, and Marines report some form of mental distress (the real percentage is no doubt higher due to mental health stigmas). Further, the Marine Corps suicide rate in January of 2009 was the highest ever recorded within that branch, and a 2009 Joint Force Quarterly article stated that “post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), substance abuse, divorce, domestic violence, and murder within the [armed] forces are on the rise.”

These ills travel abroad inside the bodies and minds of soldiers in combat and are transmitted back into the societies that deployed them, straining the bank accounts and empathic capacities of families, friends, and government institutions. In other words, they suffer, and so do we. The hope is that contemplative resiliency programs can help mitigate these effects, and empirical studies have consistently shown that they do.

But war as a research setting has another value to scientists like Stanley. Dr. Amishi Jha, a University of Miami Professor of Psychology and Mind and Life Fellow who has studied the effects of Dr. Stanley’s MMFT program, said in a 2010 interview that “other than pregnant women or people who are about to enter chemotherapy, there are very few contexts [like military deployment] in which a known high-stress event [is guaranteed to happen] and its timeframe is known.” It is those two definitive variables that allow scientists to draw more conclusive data about the effectiveness of meditative practice for groups that undergo it and those groups who do not, lending the science true meaning and integrity.

From the perspective of a traumatized soldier or a policy-maker worried about the long-term effectiveness of her country’s troops, programs like Stanley’s are obviously beneficial. But within contemplative communities that espouse certain ethical orientations, they remain problematic. While the language of today’s military contemplative programs are plainly different from those of early 20th century Japan, opponents of the military use of meditation claim that some contemplative practices can become the means to improve a soldier’s killing capabilities.

When asked whether she had encountered any ethical opposition to her research from contemplative in the United States or abroad, Jha said that plenty of instructors and authors had voiced their disapproval but that, tongue in cheek, she didn’t “want to name names of our ‘enemies’.”

Some protestors may concede that “it’s okay to offer [contemplative training] post-deployment after damages occur,” but that ultimately more damage may be done if meditation is incorporated into pre-deployment training by “making [soldiers] concentrated robots.”

One of Jha’s counterarguments to this notion is that, because both the majority of soldiers currently deployed and those participating in the study are on their third or fourth deployments, “that line is instantly blurred, of what is pre- and what is post-.” She also claims that it is incorrect to assume the contemplative training is “devoid of an ethical container,” though she did not elaborate on its nature.

In my interview with her, Jha recounted an anecdote that had been relayed to her by an Army commander. A convoy was leaving a town in Iraq. The last vehicle in the convoy was a tank with a gunner. As the convoy drove away, the gunner saw it come under fire. The rules of engagement state that when fired upon, a soldier determines the source of the attack and fires back. This gunner did not shoot. The commander stopped the convoy farther down the road, marched up to the tank, and demanded to know why he had not returned fire. The gunner said, “Sir, the figure was too small.” He had made the call not to fire his gun at what runed out to be a child.

It is difficult for any of us to act against our behavioral conditioning. After millions of years of evolution, we have developed highly sophisticated mechanisms for self-defense. This becomes even more true for those who have gone through the type of rigorous military training that prepares the body to “fight” rather than “flight.” However, the gunner’s tale is a clear example of an individual having enough emotional self-regulation to be able to follow an ethical code of conduct in a high-stress situation.

Given that “soldiers who screened positive for mental health problems after returning home were up to three times more likely to report having engaged in unethical behavior while deployed,” it remains and open, and interesting, question as to whether soldiers wouldn’t benefit from having more contemplative resources to make an already morally ambiguous situation a little less so.

* this article adapted and updated from an original submission – Rocha, T. (2010). Zen and War. The College Hill Independent, Volume 21, Issue 5, pg. 8

Further Reading

For a GQ interview with Dr. Amishi Jha, see: The Men Who Stare at Nothingness

For an extensive article on yoga and meditation in the military, see: A State of Military Mind

For an interview with an American Buddhist solider, see: Interview with an American Buddhist Soldier Serving in Afghanistan

His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama, Presidential Distinguished Professor at Emory University, will return to Atlanta October 8-10, 2013 for a series of public and campus events, including programs on responsible citizenship, ethics and education.

Two public events (tickets on sale April 26 at 10:00 am) are scheduled for Tuesday, October 8, 2013 at The Arena at Gwinnett Center. Admission to both events is included with each ticket purchased.

Tickets for the public events go on sale at 10:00 am Friday, April 26, 2013 (click here for ticket details, prices, and seating charts).

The Mind & Life Institute (MLI) is co-sponsoring the afternoon event on Secular Ethics, which connects to our new initiative in Secular Ethics and Compassion. It will feature MLI President Dr. Arthur Zajonc, MLI Board Member and Fellow Dr. Richard Davidson, MLI Fellow Geshe Lobsang Tenzin Negi, Dr. Frans de Waal, and of course His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

A website for The Visit 2013 is available at: http://dalailama.emory.edu

Tickets go on sale beginning Friday, April 26 at 10:00 am EDT at: http://www.gwinnettcenter.com, in-person at the box office at The Arena at Gwinnett Center, or by phone at 1-888-9-AXS-TIX

We invite you to view and share a welcome video from Geshe Lobsang Negi for The Visit 2013 at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrJxm5wXDhY

For general event questions, please email info@dalailama.emory.edu

Einstein asked, “What would it be like to ride light?”

For perhaps the hundredth time, I try to think like Einstein. A burst of light is seen by two observers: one stationary on a platform, the other moving in a train. Assume the speed of light is the same for both observers. That’s it, that’s all you need to change forever our understanding of space, time, matter, and the universe. No Large Hadron Collider, no CERN, no Hubble Space Telescope, no footnotes, no academic appointment, just the clear light of one mind, and a friend or two to talk with while walking the Berner Oberland breathing in the pristine mountain air. How did he do it? How could Einstein think so clearly, so faithfully, when everyone else held fast to habits of mind that seemed so sensible and yet were so ultimately wrong.

We think of meditation as following the breath, but for Einstein meditation was following thought. He had learned how to see the burst of light expanding, traveling at the same speed for the two observers. To the moving observer on the train, the circle of light expanded equally on all sides. To the stationary one on the platform, the light expanded also, but in addition Einstein saw the movement of the train caused one side to meet the wave earlier than the other side. I mimic his thoughts, one-by-one, I think with him and, in this moment, what Einstein thought I think. His insight becomes mine. Our conclusions: simultaneity is relative. Moving clocks run slow. Lengths are foreshortened along the direction of motion. No laboratory is needed, only the mind and the amazing power of pure thought.

The Dalai Lama writes often about “analytic meditation.” As he explained to Howard Cutler (see Psychology Today, May 1, 2001), “In analytic meditation, one brings about inner change through systematic investigation and analysis. In this way we can properly use our human intelligence, our capacity for reason and analysis, to contribute to our happiness and satisfaction.” Einstein’s analytic meditation led to his theory of relativity; it has the possibility of changing our minds in ways that are truly profound.

As I work through each step inwardly from both points of view – stationary and moving – I encounter a paradox, a contraction. How can an object have different lengths? How can a clock (including the clock of my bodily processes) run differently when viewed from the two vantage points? How can my “now” be different from yours? All three are implied by Einstein’s relativity theory. Surely one set of observations must be the True set. No, each has equal justification, no vantage point is privileged. Then I remember that I am assuming the universe looks like something without me or anyone around. I presume that it looks like something unto itself. This is not so. All of its attributes, even the most fundamental ones like extension and duration, are attributes as noted by an observer, real or imagined. We and the world are knit together by Einstein’s thinking in ways that astonish me. It is so difficult not to reify the world, and instead to recognize that I am implicated everywhere and in every impression. The careful reasoning that leads us to this conclusion is Einstein’s gift, the fruit of his analytic meditation.

A second kind of meditation should then be joined to the first, says the Dalai Lama. Once we have, through analytic meditation, come to an insight or deeper understanding, then we should cease our analysis and begin the practice of “calm abiding.” In this practice we still our reasoning, quiet the mind, and allow the full significance of the insight to sink in. We calmly abide with the insight and the feelings it evokes, in this case, the feeling of our persistent relationship with the universe: our co-dependence. We realize that the deeper coherence of the universe requires that each of us inhabits a lawful world of our own that may seem inconsistent with the worlds inhabited by others. Only at another more subtle level are these individualized worlds harmonized: difference and unity. Once we internalize this difficult insight, we begin to swim, ungrounded, in a multiplicity of possible worlds. But that is okay. In the language of Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch (The Embodied Mind), we learn to lay down the path beneath our feet by walking. Instead of looking for security in stasis, we realize the groundlessness of material reality and find our way to security through movement instead, through processes that generate meanings. In Robert Kegan’s classification of the stages of human epistemologies, he calls this final stage the “self-transforming mind.” Only a very, very few ever make it to this level of meaning making. Einstein’s analytic meditation and calm abiding can be a help getting there.

And now I’ll return to the burst of light for the 101st time. Care to join me?

-Arthur Zajonc
President

* This article originally posted on March 17, 2011 in The Meditative Life, a blog of Psychology Today.

His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama has said that “in today’s secular world, religion alone is no longer adequate as a basis for ethics… any religion-based answer to the problem of our neglect of inner values can never be universal, and so will be inadequate. What we need today is an approach to ethics which makes no recourse to religion and can be equally acceptable to those with faith and those without: a secular ethics.”ⁱ

If we broaden our consideration of “secular ethics” beyond its characterization by the Dalai Lama, we can consider it a part of moral philosophy. A secular ethicist views ethical systems as distinct from and at times opposed to ethics that are shaped by religious guidance or supernatural revelation. Despite the wide variety of philosophical views adopted by secular ethicists, most will generally share one or more of the following principles: that human beings, through the innate human capacities for empathy and compassion, are capable of determining ethical conduct in life; that through the use of logic and reason, humans are capable of deriving normative principles of behavior; that humans have a moral responsibility to ensure that societies and individuals act in accordance with these ethical principles; and that societies should “advance” from less ethical and just to more ethical and just forms.ⁱⁱ

Of course, many sorts of moral philosophers would immediately object by saying that all ethics are secular ethics, in the sense that moral reasoning is understood to be based solely on the human capacities for logic, reason, and moral intuition, and that ethical behavior can be cultivated and promoted in ways where religion has no bearing. In other words, we habitually make moral judgments about the soundness and validity of religiously-based ethical prescriptions. For most academic moral philosophers, the distinction between ethics and secular ethics is redundant.

But these kinds of objections, perfectly valid as they are, distract from the essence of what the Dalai Lama is pointing towards, nor does his quote necessarily imply that an approach to the development of “inner values” is only adequate insofar as it can be universalized. His claim is much humbler, simpler, and has to do with the innate human capacity for receiving, experiencing, and imparting compassion. Because of this innate capacity, there is at least one sense in which we may draw certain conclusions about the relationship between compassion and a universal (or at the very least, broad) understanding of ethical behavior.

The Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader actually advances a fairly Aristotelian view of morality when he says that “ethics consists less of rules to be obeyed than of principles for inner self-regulation to promote those aspects of our nature which we recognize as conducive to our own well-being and that of others.”ⁱⁱⁱ This is an example of old (but still good) wine in new bottles. More than 2,000 years ago, recorded in the work on moral philosophy for which he is most well known – the Nicomachean Ethics – Aristotle expands upon the theme of moral goodness, and especially on the idea of moral virtues which, “like crafts, are acquired by practice and habituation.”^iv

Aristotle claims that moral virtues are acquired only by exercising them, and so infuses the image of morality as being irreducibly active, contextualized within the carefully calibrated practice of human relations within a specific social and political community, as opposed solely to the product of independent moral reasoning or critical analysis. We become, in his words, “just by performing just acts, temperate by performing temperate ones, brave by performing brave ones.”^v

Certainly there is deep disagreement about how to proceed with the task of singling out “those aspects of our nature which we recognize as conducive to our own well-being and that of others.” Aristotle would have a different name for these aspects: virtues. In his mind, the good citizen proceeds through life in a state of continual performance of virtue. Which ones? He seems to focus especially, among a few others, on generosity, justice, temperance, patience, and friendliness. His Holiness, on the other hand, has settled comfortably on compassion as the basis for a secular ethics.

The Dalai Lama also happens to distinguish between two levels of compassion.^vi The first is the “biological level”, by which he refers to the sorts of instinctual nurturing behaviors that mammals tend to demonstrate towards their offspring, close kin, and social groups. The second is “an extended level, which has to be deliberately cultivated.” This second level of compassion is acquired like a craft, through practice and habituation.

In last week’s blog post, Mind and Life’s Senior Scientific Officer, Wendy Hasenkamp, discussed some empirical evidence indicating that certain kinds of contemplative practices may increase compassionate behavior. Yes, there is still fundamental philosophical disagreement about what exactly constitutes “compassion” and “behavior”. But these studies are nonetheless promising: they show us how engaging in relatively simple practices leads to concrete, measurable changes in kindness and warm-heartedness – something that Aristotle, and even most moral philosophers, could probably get behind.

-Tom Rocha
Program and Research Associate

Most of us like to think that we’re compassionate people – that, given the opportunity, we’d recognize another’s pain and be moved to help.  But in the midst of our daily lives, how compassionate are we, really?  And is this something we can change about ourselves?

These questions were at the heart of a recent study led by Paul Condon, a graduate student studying social psychology with Dr. David DeSteno at Northeastern University. The experiment offered participants eight weeks of meditation instruction. Meeting for two hours each week, half of the participants were taught techniques to foster mindfulness, and the other half were trained in compassion. A comparison group of people who were also interested in learning meditation received their training after the study was complete.

After eight weeks of instruction, participants took various cognitive tests, believing that the experiment was measuring the effect of meditation on things like attention and memory.  However, the real goal was to understand changes in compassionate helping behavior.  This is where the experiment got elegantly clever.

The set-up went as follows. When a participant arrived for their cognitive testing at the end of the study, he or she entered a waiting room to find three chairs, two of which were occupied. Unbeknownst to the participant, the two other people in the waiting room were “confederates” – colleagues who were part of the study, but posing as bystanders. Naturally, the participant took the third seat and waited. After a minute, a third confederate, a woman, appeared around the corner with crutches and a walking boot. She winced in pain as she walked, stopped at the chairs and looked at her cell phone, then audibly sighed in discomfort and leaned back against a wall.  The two other confederates continued to wait, seated. This scene was allowed to play out for two more minutes.

The real test was, would the participant feel moved to respond compassionately, and give up his/her chair to the woman on crutches? Condon and his colleagues found there was a clear difference in behavior: those who had undergone meditation training (either in compassion or mindfulness) were five times more likely to give up their seat to the woman on crutches than those who had not practiced meditation. That’s a huge effect.

A small gesture? Maybe so. But some argue that these kinds of behavioral measures might be more meaningful than those derived from an EEG or an MRI machine – they tap into how we respond to our fellow humans.

This result is even more striking considering that the odds were stacked against the participant. “The truly surprising aspect of this finding is that meditation made people willing to act virtuous — to help another who was suffering — even in the face of a norm not to do so,” said DeSteno. “The fact that the other actors were ignoring the pain creates a ‘bystander-effect’ that normally tends to reduce helping.” Perhaps you’ve experienced this effect yourself, feeling less inclined to help someone in need if you are on a street full of other people who are pretending the situation doesn’t exist. That these participants were so willing to help, even in the face of this implicit pressure to remain seated, suggests a powerful effect of meditation on social behavior.

Condon reflects, “We knew that meditation improves a person’s own physical and psychological well-being, but now we have evidence that meditation actually increases compassionate behavior.” Those who are familiar with meditation know that its sometimes easy to feel compassion when sitting peacefully (and alone) on the cushion, but its in our everyday lives and interactions with others where the rubber meets the road.

We at Mind and Life are thrilled to see this kind of research being done on the real-world effects of contemplative practice.  Condon’s study was funded by a Mind and Life Francisco J. Varela Research Award, and will be published soon in the journal Psychological Science. Co-author Gaelle Desbordes of Massachusetts General Hospital and Boston University is also a past Varela Award recipient.

Condon was recently granted a Mind and Life 1440 Award to continue this work, which together with the study described above will make up his doctoral dissertation. Considering the role of the Mind & Life Institute in his career development, he remarks, “Mind and Life has been a great resource for me. The community provides me with a strong scientific foundation to study meditation, and an opportunity to interact with experts in neuroscience and contemplative scholarship. Funding from Mind and Life has allowed me to conduct interesting research on the social effects of meditation that I would not have been able to conduct otherwise. Overall, I probably would not have pursued meditation as a research topic without the support of the Mind and Life community and these awards.”

As with any study, this experiment has limitations, and follow-up work needs to be done.  One potential caveat is that the comparison group was not exposed to the social interactions and the presence of an engaging teacher that was experienced by the meditation group on a weekly basis. Its possible that the observed increase in helping behavior was not due specifically to meditation, but to these other social influences.  Measures indicate that both the meditation and control groups had similar levels of social interaction in their lives during the course of the study, making this possibility unlikely, but future research will need to rule it out conclusively.

We look forward to the results of Paul’s next study, which will extend his work to investigate the effects of meditation on behavioral and physiological responses to anger in real-world settings.  Hopefully, studies like this will help us understand how the benefits of meditation transfer “off the cushion,” to alleviate suffering in everyday life.

-Wendy Hasenkamp, PhD
Senior Scientific Officer, Mind & Life Institute

Despite these successes, more can be done to gain a deeper understand of the effects of meditation in our daily lives. To date, research on contemplative practice has focused largely on exploring the effects of meditation on the body and mind in a laboratory setting. Common themes have focused on questions such as: How do contemplative practices affect biological and psychological systems in the practitioner? Are there consistent, measurable changes that lead to positive outcomes (e.g., reduced stress, brain changes, personality changes)? While this stage is a necessary first step to begin to understand the mechanisms underlying meditation, the real work lies in applying this knowledge outside the lab, in everyday life. Thus, the next step is moving toward applied, real-world science: How can contemplative practices be used to increase our awareness of ourselves and others in the midst of our modern world? What practices lead to healthier relationships and more compassionate interactions, and how can we measure this?

Mind and Life recently joined with the 1440 Foundation to design a program in the hopes of advancing contemplative science into this next phase of investigation. Stemming from this collaboration, we were excited to hold the first cycle of the Mind and Life 1440 Awards for Real-world Contemplative Research last fall. These grants of $15,000 – $25,000 are geared towards the investigation of real-world (as opposed to lab-based) outcomes of contemplative practice. Specifically, the 1440 Awards are intended to promote research that evaluates whether and how contemplative practice can promote inner well-being and healthy relationships, as well as the development of new methods to assess these outcomes in everyday life.

After a very competitive funding cycle, we are thrilled to announce the first Mind and Life 1440 Awardees:

• Carrie Adair
  University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
  Mindfulness in interpersonal judgments and relationships in daily life
• Julie Brefczynski-Lewis
  West Virginia University
  Short and long-term behavioral, physiological, and brain changes resulting from compassion meditation training as an intervention for stress due to difficult interpersonal relationships
• Paul Condon
  Northeastern University
  Contemplative practice, emotional well-being, and the transformation of hostility in the lab and real world
• Eric Garland and Amber Kelly
  Florida State University
  Trauma-informed Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction to promote intra- and interpersonal flourishing among survivors of traumatic violence

Congratulations to our winners, and we wish you great success in your studies. By enabling high-level research in the area of social and relational outcomes of contemplative practice, it is our hope that the 1440 Awards will expand the applications and impact of contemplative practices in the world.

PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Jacqui DeFelice, Director of Operations and Advancement // (413) 387-0710
 

Hadley, Massachusetts, United States (February 11, 2013) – The Board and staff of the Mind & Life Institute were excited to learn this week of a pending gift of $1,000,000 to Mind and Life from Tenzin Gyatso, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama.

The gift, presented through The Dalai Lama Trust in New York, will provide crucial support for Mind and Life’s central activities. “This commitment to support Mind & Life’s core expenses took my breath away. It is both an expression of gratitude from His Holiness for what Mind and Life has achieved, but even more an encouragement and strong affirmation of the future work to which we are committed,” said Arthur Zajonc, President of Mind and Life.

Mind and Life programs to be supported by the gift include public dialogue events between scientists and contemplatives, Mapping the Mind, an interdisciplinary research initiative to explore the contours of human consciousness, as well as research to alleviate suffering associated with craving and addiction. Of particular interest to His Holiness is a new global research and development initiative, Educating our Humanity, that is inspired by His Holiness’ book Beyond Religion. This program recognizes that a modern ethics must reach beyond any particular religion for its foundation, and seeks to design a science-based curriculum to foster the ethical dimensions of human character such as compassion, altruism and kindness from early childhood through adulthood.

“This is a fantastic development and powerfully represents His Holiness’ most active support and encouragement of Mind and Life and its mission,” stated Thupten Jinpa, Chair of the Board at Mind and Life.

About the Mind & Life Institute
Mind and Life is a global non-governmental organization which seeks to alleviate suffering and promote human flourishing by an ever increasing understanding of the human mind, consciousness and the nature of reality, arrived at through the joint investigation of both rigorous science and the practice of contemplative inquiry.

Mind and Life came into being in 1987 with a dialogue between His Holiness the Dalai Lama and a few western scientists and contemplatives to exchange ideas between Buddhism and the cognitive sciences. Since then His Holiness has encouraged and participated in many Mind and Life events over the last 26 years, with Nobel laureates and other eminent scholars and scientists on the urgent issues of our time. These culminated most recently in an historic 6-day meeting in Mundgod, India. The January 2013 event brought together western scientists and philosophers and several thousand Tibetan Buddhist monastics to discuss the nature of reality and the human mind and to celebrate the launch of a new science curriculum for monastic students, the first such major curriculum change in over 600 years.
 

For more information contact Jacqui DeFelice, Director of Operations and Advancement at Jacqui@mindandlife.org or (413) 387-0710.