This week in Science, Meditation, and the Media

First, from USATODAY, an article titled, “Meditation makes people more rational decision-makers.”  There we read that subjects were tested by being asked if they would accept a modest gift from a relative who had just won a large sum of money. Nonmeditators, reacting emotionally with disgust and a sense unfairness (read greed) typically turn down the gift all together, 75% of the time in fact:

People who practice Buddhist meditation behaved differently. Researchers found in their test that more than 50% of Buddhist meditators took the rational offer of free money [instead of the roughly 25% of nonmeditators], rather than rejecting it because it felt unfair.

But meditators showed no significant activity for the anterior insula [the area of the brain associated with emotions such as mistrust and betrayal] when offered a portion of the money. In fact they increased activity in the posterior insula, which has been linked to rational decision-making.

This makes me think of the Mark Vernon piece a month ago, “Buddhism is the new opium of the People” in the UK’s Guardian paper. Vernon is essentially a mouthpiece for Slavoj Žižek in the article, which -as you would guess- does not speak highly of Buddhism in the West. Others and myself have written about Žižek and Buddhism over the past 5-10 years, as his criticisms of Western Buddhism have grown and spread. Vernon states that Buddhism:

actually functions as a perfect supplement to modern life. It allows adherents to decouple from the stress, whilst leaving the causes of the stress intact: consumptive forces continue unhindered along their creatively destructive path. In short, Buddhism is the new opium of the people.

In reality, what this study shows is that Buddhism allows us to decouple from the irrational emotional knee-jerk responses that cause so much of our own (and others’) suffering in life. And just as rampant consumption is irrational and self-destructive and functions so brilliantly due to its manipulation of our emotions (I agree with Žižek on that), Buddhism/meditation actually serves as an antidote to the “creatively destructive path of  capitalism.”

I could go on, and hope to write more in the future…

But for now, from the BBC comes a second study which, like many others, looks at advanced Tibetan meditators to see what effects their practice has had on their brains and mental activity.

“One thing that meditation does for those who practise it a lot is that it cultivates attentional skills,” Dr Josipovic [the lead researcher] says, adding that those harnessed skills can help lead to a more tranquil and happier way of being.

“Meditation research, particularly in the last 10 years or so, has shown to be very promising because it points to an ability of the brain to change and optimise in a way we didn’t know previously was possible.”

And a third article discusses emerging data from the Shamatha project:

After several years of number-crunching, data from the so-called Shamatha project is finally starting to be published. So far the research has shown some not hugely surprising psychological and cognitive changes – improvements in perception and wellbeing, for example. But one result in particular has potentially stunning implications: that by protecting caps called telomeres on the ends of our chromosomes, meditation might help to delay the process of ageing.

“The news from this paper is the profound impact of having the opportunity to live your life in a way that you find meaningful.” 

For a scientific conclusion it sounds scarily spiritual. But researchers warn that in our modern, work-obsessed society we are increasingly living on autopilot, reacting blindly to tweets and emails instead of taking the time to think about what really matters. If we don’t give our minds a break from that treadmill, the physical effects can be scarily real.

Indeed, the shamatha project shows how close science and meditation are becoming. Along with that closeness comes added need for precautions -a fact discussed in the article- against bias. We can hope that the added work brings greater respectability and indeed further independent replication of the research results. If all three of these turn out to be correct, we have three more great reasons for meditating: a more rational response to the world, better attention, and a longer, healthier life. I’ll meditate to that!