Research conducted by Richard Davidson at the University of Wisconsin recently studied brain activity in a European-born Buddhist monk, Oser, who had spent three decades meditating on compassion in the Himalayas.
Davidson's research had previously found that people who have high levels of brain activity in the left prefrontal cortex of the brain simultaneously report positive, happy states of mind, such as zeal, enthusiasm, joy, vigour and mental buoyancy. Oser was asked to meditate intensively on compassion and then to relax after sixty seconds while being monitored by an fMRI magnetic imaging machine. Goleman describes the results:
"While Oser was generating a state of compassion during meditation, he showed a remarkable leftward shift in this parameter of prefrontal function... In short, Oser's brain shift during compassion seemed to reflect an +extremely+ pleasant mood. The very act of concern for others' well-being, it seems, creates a greater sense of well-being within oneself." (Goleman, ibid, p.12)
Oser has some kind of association going on where thinking compassionate thoughts causes him to feel happy. This of course doesn't mean the same is true for all people. Also I don't understand what's the point of spending three decades meditating on compassion. Maybe he could instead join the peace corp or something, I don't know.
In another experiment, Davidson monitored the base-line state of left prefrontal cortex activity indicating normal everyday mood in 175 American individuals. Subsequently, he also monitored the base-line state of a 'geshe', an abbot, from one of the leading Buddhist monasteries in India. Davidson reports:
"Something very interesting and exciting emerged from this. We recorded the brain activity of the geshe and were able to compare his brain activity to the other individuals who participated in experiments in my laboratory over the last couple of years... The geshe had the most extreme positive value out of the entire hundred and seventy-five that we had ever tested at that point." (Goleman, ibid, p.339)
Davidson describes the geshe as "an outlier" on the graph - his reading was "three standard deviations to the left", far beyond the rest of the bell curve for positive emotion.
And this means... what? It's still just one single person of course.
These findings support claims made by meditators over hundreds of years that compassion and concern for others are in fact the basis of human happiness. They also support the claim that human emotions such as compassion, love, anger and jealousy arise more intensively and more often, the more often we generate them.
Well it's only two people actually. The first of whom being one single person who did happen to associate compassion with happiness. The second of whom we don't really know anything at all except that I guess he/she spent time meditating...
It is important to understand the fundamental nature of the meditation in which Oser had been engaging.
...although it wasn't Oser who had the extreme happiness going on..., it was the second meditator. The one we know nothing of really.
In Buddhist psychology, the word meditation has a very specific meaning. Here, the Dalai Lama explains:
"Meditation means creating a continual familiarity with a virtuous object [idea] in order to transform your mind. Merely understanding some point does not transform your mind. You may intellectually see the advantages of an altruistic awakening mind, but that does not actually affect your self-centred attitude. Your self-centredness will be dispelled only through constantly familiarising yourself with that understanding. That is what is meant by meditation." (The Dalai Lama, Awakening The Mind, Lightening The Heart, Thorsons, 1997, p.51)
In other words, repeatedly familiarising the mind with the suffering of others, and acting to remedy that suffering, has the effect of increasing the intensity and frequency of compassionate thoughts. The implications, as Buddhists have long claimed, and as science is beginning to confirm, are remarkable:
"If everything you do with your body, speech, and mind is done for the benefit of others, there is no need to do anything more for your own benefit because the one is included in the other." (Gampopa)
Time spent worrying about others means less time spent worrying about yourself. This can reduce stress somewhat (as it's hard to really worry about others as much as yourself, haha.) Also if you happen to know that you're performing some activity that will make other people's lives happier (which isn't happening at all if all you're doing is sitting on your ass and thinking about others) then by long term self interest their happiness could potentially improve your own life. There is just the thought of the world having become a better place. Which in turn then you feel happy yourself to be living in a slightly better world.
But, I don't really see that this has much to do with meditating at all.
From Rideflame:
Is there concrete evidence that a person who meditates is actually happier than someone who does not? Or is the happiness a product of engaging in an activity that person enjoys doing. Secondly, a person meditating on compassion says that he feels compassionTM...but does that make a person actually compassionate?
What in the world meditating on compassion actually entailed for this one single person I don't know.
Personally I used to lay in bed at night and imagine I was a cow, etc and having horrible things done to me. It did not make me feel happy at all. The opposite of course. And then I'd sit down to eat and have a bit of trouble enjoying my food. I've no idea what Oser was thinking about. I would think thining about suffering might make a person compassionate. And that actually thinking about suffering wouldn't actually make a person happy. It's later on, actual actions that might make the person happy. Oser was supposedly just feeling happy immediately while thinking about whatever he was thinking. Was he daydreaming that he was out there in the world actually doing good deeds? I guess he could be. I don't know. But that of itself still tells us nothing at all. He's one single person, who may or may not have previously spent time doing what I did, etc.
Next, a problem with the idiot-school of contemporary science is faith in simplistic definitions of what constitutes good and bad. By the time you get to meditators the whole thing has exploded into a mess of FUBAR-ness the like of which you may never have experienced before! So someone meditating on compassion says he is now compassionateTM, and yet all you get in a real world situation from this person is a set of platitudes and explanations as to why you are hurting yourself!
No idea what he was up to in his life. Rideflame would have far more experience then me with people who meditate.
I mentioned (I think) long ago public service nightmares. That in a 'utopia' everyone would be forced to watch people suffering, (via movies, etc). To try to make them really understand suffering. That might make people more compassionate (or it might really backfire...). But such imaginings are the opposite of the happy stuff people are doing with meditating, or so I hear. Yes, I do really think it would be better if people sat around and tried to imagine awful things instead.
Basically meditating on compassion does not necessarily make someone compassionate, any more than playing Quake makes it possible to hit someone hard enough to cause them to explode! The idiot-science derived from psychology would have you believe that practicing loving people in your head makes it easier to love people in the real world...well no...I don't believe so.
Ok. Sure, I agree.
I do like Abba kind of though. (Not that I've ever bought their music...) In part because I'm 36 and I attach them to a short time of innocence in the mid to late 70's when I was very young. When my parents were young enough that they bothered to go out and mingle with the other young professors, go to parties and so on. Running around with other little kids without quite so much of the mental junk that we eventually aquire. I don't know. I can pretend there was hope in 1978 or so, there were choices... and Abba (which mirrored a sort of innocence) was playing in the background.
