Brain science explains meditation benefits

Neuroscientists at the University of Wisconsin recently asked volunteers to practice "compassion meditation" while reclining inside MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) machines. Results showed that the brains of more experienced meditators exhibited greater activity in areas known to be related to empathy and emotions than the brains of the less experienced meditators. The tentative conclusion seems to be that meditation does have "real" effects that can be objectively measured in the brain, and that experience and practice in meditation does make a difference.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23829470/

Continuous awakening

There is really no point at which this "work" begins or ends. It is a continuous awakening to divinity in each moment, walking in forests, being with others, organizing programs, planting seeds, driving, skiing, drinking tea and resting.

-- Rowena Pattee, in Shape Shifters: Shaman Women in Contemporary Society by Michele Jamal

Recognizing transit state

The sure way to recognize the transit state is to never assume that you are not in it at this moment.

-- E.J. Gold, The American Book of the Dead

Barrier to inner awakening

The greatest barrier to inner awakening is having an opinion about oneself.

If one could die completely to all attachments right now, then awakening would immediately be attained.

-- Shaykh Fadhlalla Haeri, Elements of Sufism

Meditation vs. depression

Meditating could be a simple solution to treating depression. Brain scans show significant changes in brain waves after just a few weeks of meditation. Experts say meditation helps patients get rid of anger, anxiety and just let everything go.

http://www.nbc12.com/news/healthcast/12657361.html

Change your brain -- with meditation

Feeling stressed or depressed? You may one day be prescribed meditation rather than medication, thanks to a study conducted by researchers from the Department of Psychology and the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Ontario.

A research team is the first to use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to map brain activity changes in people trained in mindfulness meditation. The researchers scanned the brains of study participants as they responded to various word prompts.

People with no meditation training showed very little change in brain activity from task to task. They mostly engaged the areas along the middle of the brain such as the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for personality and social behaviour.

But participants who had practiced meditation regularly showed a more dramatic change in brain activity when asked to move from the narrative to the experiential focus: they shifted away from the midline brain regions to areas that regulate more primitive functions such as touch, pain and temperature sensation.

“This ability to alter brain activity may explain why so many studies show mood improvements with meditation. It turns out taking a break from the middle regions of the brain, which we tend to overuse,might be just what’s needed to help you feel better,” said a researcher.

http://www.news.utoronto.ca/bin6/071214-3559.asp

Balance and Vitality

The daily rule for dietary discipline is never to eat to the point of fullness. The daily rule for sexual discipline is never to make love to the point of emptiness. Appetite should remain after all vital activities. Otherwise vital energy enervates, toxifies, isolates, and kills the body and mind.

Avoid excess or extremes. These create imbalance and enervation and toxicity. Do what maintains vitality and do it constantly. Feel to Infinity as the whole body. Relax profoundly under all conditions. Do not think or recoil (emotionally or physically) as a chronic activity. Learn to retain the vital force, especially in sexuality, and pervade the whole body with it. Learn to reverse the current of life in order to refresh and conserve the whole body.

-- Bubba Free John, from The Eating Gorilla Comes in Peace

Zazen without Zazen

From ancient times until the present day, all who were ever enlightened either by light or sound practiced zazen without zazen and became simultaneously enlightened.

-- from the Shobogenzo (Treasury of True Dharma Eye) of Dogen (13th cent.)

Living in Totality

When you have lived life in its totality, you have to renounce it! Only those who have not lived rightly, who have not lived at all, who have known only tepid lives, try to cling. Beggars are unable to renounce. Only a king like the Buddha is ready to renounce. Only emperors can become sannyasins, not beggars.

-- Osho, from Until You Die: Discourses on the Sufi Way

What is Left

"Maturity is what is on the other side of Realizing. Maturity is what is left after inquiry."

-- Byron Kate, The Work Intensive (El Segundo 5/14/00)

Take care of your meditation and your meditation will take care of you.

'60s Pop star to open Meditation U. in Scotland

Sixties pop star Donovan is working on a plan to open a university in Scotland to be devoted to transcendental meditation.

The 'Mellow Yellow' singer says TM guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi asked him to build the university while the pop star was on pilgrimage to India back in 1968. But it wasn't until he met famed film director David Lynch in recent years that he decided to fulfill the Maharishi's request.

Lynch and Donovan plan to contact education officials in Scotland to make the school a legitimate place of learning and Lynch says the effects could be outstanding.

http://www.nme.com/news/nme/32146

Dalai Lama discusses meditation with scientists

Nearly four thousand people filled the gymnasium of Emory University in Atlanta to listen to a conversation between scientists and the Dalai Lama about the effects of meditation on depression.

Several top experts on depression indicated that meditation can play a big part in treating people suffering from the condition.

The one-day conference was sponsored by Emory University and the Boulder, Colorado-based Mind & Life Institute. It was part of a weekend of events with the Dalai Lama, who has accepted a distinguished professorship at the prestigious private college.

On Friday, the exiled Tibetan leader was presented with a science curriculum designed by Emory faculty and translated into Tibetan. The faculty will teach the curriculum to thousands of Tibetan monks living in India starting in January 2008 and part of a program requested by the Dalai Lama to improve monastic education.

http://tinyurl.com/3b6tq6

Filmmaker Promotes Meditation on Israel Trip

David Lynch, on a five-day visit to Israel to encourage transcendental meditation, met with Israeli President and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shimon Peres.

The 61-year-old director, who has received Oscar nominations for "The Elephant Man," "Blue Velvet" and "Mullholland Dr.," is visiting Israel to encourage transcendental meditation as a new approach to eliminating violence in schools and creating a peaceful world.

"Real peace is not just the absence of war, but the absence of all suffering, all negativity," Lynch said at the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School in Jerusalem. "Change comes from within. From the first meditation, boom, you're there."

Lynch has been meditating for more than 30 years. He started the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace to promote transcendental meditation as a way to aid students in violence-ridden schools and bring about world harmony.

http://tinyurl.com/2t8v47

Mantra and Meditation

Much effort has been put into finding the "right" mantra for a particular person -- and the meaning is taken to be all-important. In fact the meaning of a mantra is of much less importance than how it feels to you. Even more important is the amount of energy and focus one puts into the recitation of one's mantra during meditation. With the right intention and focus, one can enter into pure meditation and the actual mantra chosen becomes a secondary issue.

Brain Network Related To Intelligence Identified

In a review of 37 imaging studies related to intelligence, including their own, a pair of neuroscientists have uncovered evidence of a distinct neurobiology of human intelligence. Their Parieto-Frontal Integration Theory (P-FIT) identifies a brain network related to intelligence, one that primarily involves areas in the frontal and the parietal lobes.

The data suggest that some of the brain areas related to intelligence are the same areas related to attention and memory and to more complex functions like language. Haier and Jung say this possible integration of cognitive functions suggests that intelligence levels might be based on how efficient the frontal-parietal networks process information.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070911092117.htm

Brain scans show why meditation works

(LiveScience.com)

Meditation and other “mindfulness” techniques are designed to help people pay more attention to their present emotions, thought and sensations without reacting strongly to them. Meditators often acknowledge and name their negative emotions in order to “let them go.”

When the team compared brain scans from subjects who had more mindful dispositions to those from subjects who were less mindful, they found a stark difference—the mindful subjects experienced greater activation in the right ventrolateral prefrontral cortex and a greater calming effect in the amygdala after labeling their emotions.

“These findings may help explain the beneficial health effects of mindfulness meditation, and suggest, for the first time, an underlying reason why mindfulness meditation programs improve mood and health,” said David Creswell, a UCLA psychologist who led the second part of the study, which will be detailed in Psychosomatic Medicine.

www.livescience.com/health/070629_naming_emotions.html

Lou Reed and Meditation

Art-rock icon Lou Reed has just released a meditation album.
Read an interview and listen to some album cuts at:
http://www.beliefnet.com/story/218/story_21812_1.html