News

Utne Magazine Article - March-April, 2005
Adam Engle Interview on Colorado Public Radio - March 10, 2005
National Geographic Article ? March, 2005
Tricycle Magazine Article, Mind and Life Board - Spring, 2005
Tricycle Magazine Article, Jon Kabat-Zinn Book - Spring, 2005
Psychology Today Article - February, 2005
Time Magazine Article - Monday, January 17, 2005
London Financial Times Article - Monday, January 14, 2005
Washington Post Article - Monday, January 3, 2005
Science & Theology News Article - December, 2004
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Article - November, 2004
Wall Street Journal Article - November, 2004
Greater Good Article - Fall, 2004
Smithsonian Magazine Article - May, 2004
San Francisco Chronicle Article - May, 2004

Utne Magazine Article - March-April, 2005
The March-April issue of Utne contains a story about scanning the brains of monks as part of its cover story "The Future of God and the Promise and Perils of Faith." "Scanning the Monk: Is the religion of tomorrow hidden in our brains?" is the sixth and final story in the God series. The article is taken from the new book Field Notes on the Compassionate Life: A Search for the Soul of Kindness by Marc Ian Barasch, The April 2005 issue of O Magazine also features an except from Field Notes on the Compassionate Life with a story entitled, "The Cure for Envy." Barasch is a former editor at Psychology Today, Natural Health, and New Age Journal. He is also an Emmy award-nominated documentary filmmaker. His previous book, Healing Dreams, was hailed by The Washington Post as "lucid, courageous, trailblazing." Barasch writes, "As evidence grows that what we habitually think and feel actually resculpts our neural tissue, scientists have begun to study others who seem able to literally change their minds-Buddhist monks who chant mantras and do visualization practices to develop what appears to be an indelible sense of compassion. With the day nearly arrived that a handful of angry people could blow up not just a restaurant but a city, we could use effective ways to defuse intolerance." He sees compassion as the key defusing agent, and he says the Dalai Lama and the Pope concur. He quotes the Dalai Lama as saying, "My only religion is kindness" and the Pope calling for a "civilization of love." Barasch goes on to ask, "How do we awaken the kindness that, along with aggression, is so clearly a part of our basic nature?" To answer his question, he cites the recent studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison with monk Matthieu Ricard and Ricard's reaction of care and concern, mixed with poignant sadness when shown pictures of pain and suffering. When Barasch asks Ricard if he thinks some people are predisposed to be kinder, Ricard cites a recent study on baby rats that had been bred to be "super-anxious." When placed with "over-caring" mothers, the baby rats lost their propensity for anxiety and grew up normal. Barasch quotes Ricard, "Just think what potential we humans must have! Even if 50 percent of our character is genetic, the other 50 percent is plastic. Learning can radically change you." Barasch further reports Ricard's reaction to his mother when she wanted to go to Bombay to serve the poor. Ricard told her that one year of retreat would bring much greater service to all sentient beings. He compares it to building a hospital to serve many as opposed to helping people on the street one by one. Barasch mentions the 2003 conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He quotes Richard Davidson, Mind and Life board member, as saying that both he and the Dalai Lama believe "the wiring in our brains is not static, not irrevocably fixed. Our brains are adaptable." Barasch also quotes Harvard neuroscientist Stephen Kosslyn and Harvard psychology professor Jerome Kagan, both Mind and Life meeting participants. In conclusion Barasch says, "Beneath the daily headlines with their recurring note of doom, the true state of affairs is almost laughably obvious. We live in a world poised on the brink of self-discovery, knowing the only god we can now afford is a god of love, and if we are to go anywhere, we must all go there together."

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Adam Engle Interview on Colorado Public Radio - March 10, 2005
Dan Drayer, executive producer of Colorado Public Radio, interviewed Adam Engle, Mind and Life Institute co-founder and chairman, for the show "Colorado Matters" on Thursday, March 10. After introducing the Mind and Life Institute as an organization facilitating meetings between the Dalai Lama, monks, and top neurologists and that those meetings have led to lab research showing meditating monks have extraordinary control over brain function, Drayer asked Engle to explain the results of some of the latest studies. In the 25-minute interview, Engle opened with a discussion of the study in which a meditating monk was subjected to the sound of a gunshot and never flinched. Engle then transitioned to a current study at Princeton University where scientists are using repeating musical notes to see how the brain reacts. Engle also talked about Antoine Lutz's and Richard Davidson's studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison which showed that meditation can foster greater joy and happiness. When Drayer asked Engle what the implications of all these studies held, Engle said, "That mental practices and mental training can negatively and positively affect our well-being." Engle further explained, "There's always been an understanding that our emotions just happen to us. But what scientists are starting to learn is that emotions can be trained over time. This is very important in a world of increasing velocity." Regarding genetics, Engle said, "Even thought there's a propensity toward certain diseases, mental training can delay the onset or reduce the effects." Engle also talked about the history of the Mind and Life Institute. He said the organization moved slowly the first ten years until realizing that science moves itself by rigorous studies published in prestigious peer-review journals. The Mind and Life Institute is currently sponsoring 16 on-going laboratory studies. He also mentioned that the Institute started a residential program (Summer Research Institute) last year for young scientists interested in this work. From that program the Mind and Life Institute awarded ten research grants to post-docs and research assistants. Reporting that Davidson's website is experiencing an unprecedented number of monthly hits, Engle said, "The snowball is just beginning to roll." Drayer was fascinated with the aspect of the Dalai Lama's involvement in the Mind and Life Institute. When he asked why, Engle gave three reasons. He said the Dalai Lama is an innately curious individual, he wants Buddhism to remain relevant to humanity and his primary motivation is in helping people. Engle further said the Dalai Lama has a theory he calls "secular ethics" which means that he wants to help people who aren't involved in spiritual practice to improve their lives. Ending the interview, Drayer asked Engle where he saw this type of research going. Engle answered, "How do we create and maintain a healthy mind? This is a multigenerational project." To listen to the full interview online, go to www.cpr.org/co_matters and click on the program archives calendar for Thursday, March 10.

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National Geographic Article - March, 2005
The March 2005 issue of National Geographic features an in-depth look at the human brain in its cover story "What's in Your Mind." This 31-page article takes the reader on a journey through the mind that includes the history of neurology, a brain tumor operation, brain imaging and mapping, facial emotion, fear response, autism, perfect pitch, object permanence, neuroplasticity in the blind, hypergraphia, and Buddhist spiritual practice. The eye-catching cover displays the tranquil face of a Tibetan Buddhist teacher wearing a high-tech electronic hairnet composed of hundreds of small white sensors, each one connected by a thin wire to hidden monitoring equipment. This photograph was taken in the laboratory of ML board member Richard Davidson as part of his ground breaking research. While the article does not mention the Mind and Life Institute, it features Paul Ekman, Ph.D who started the Cultivating Emotional Balance program, a direct result of the 2000 Mind and Life Institute meetings with the Dalai Lama on Destructive Emotions. CEB is a collaboration between the Mind and Life Institute and UCSF Medical Center. Margaret Kemeny has succeeded Paul as the project's principal investigator. Writer James Shreeve discusses Ekman's now classic study on the meaning of facial expressions. Readers can participate in a global survey to help scientists learn more about how we communicate with facial expressions by finding the links at www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/0503 to research studies reported in the story. When explaining the evolution of plasticity, Shreeve quotes another Mind and Life Institute meeting participant for 2001. "Ten years ago most neuroscientists saw the brain as a kind of computer, developing fixed functions early," says Michael Merzenich of the University of California, San Francisco, a pioneer in understanding brain plasticity. "What we now appreciate is that the brain is continually revising itself throughout life." At the end of the article in the section on spiritual mind, Shreeve mentions Richard Davidson and his colleagues' studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison on brain activity in Tibetan monks. Shreeve notes that in the study meditators were happier and had stronger immune systems than those who did not meditate. Davidson is a Mind and Life Institute board member. Shreeve closes with a quote from the Dalai Lama. "You don't have to become a Buddhist," says the Dalai Lama himself, who is closely following the work of Western cognitive scientists like Davidson. "Everybody has the potential to lead a peaceful, meaningful life."

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Tricycle Magazine Article, Mind and Life Board - Spring, 2005
The Spring 2005 issue of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review includes a story that features the Mind and Life Institute board members.Tricycle, founded in 1991, is a non-profit quarterly magazine dedicated to spreading the dharma. In the first story, "Meeting of the Minds," Tricycle publisher and editor James Shaheen and contributing editor Joan Duncan Oliver interview the Mind and Life board at an institute planning session at Princeton University. In the question-and-answer format, the writers ask for an update on Mind and Life Institute-sponsored collaborative research studies between scientists and Buddhists. When asked about the results of Mind and Life studies so far, and where the institute plans to take them in the future, Richard Davidson says, "Our initial work indicates that meditation changes brain function. One of our hopes now is that a broader range of scientists will be inspired to examine the potential impact of contemplative practice on different behavior domains. One of our goals is to launch studies that look at the impact of meditation on attention and the brain systems that support it." Davidson, along with his colleges at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, published their findings on research with Buddhist monks in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in the fall of 2004. B. Alan Wallace offered a second area for future study with his idea to translate Buddhist personality types into personality types defined by modern psychology, and then look at which contemplative practice best suits different individuals. When asked if Mind and Life studies are changing the scientific community's view of subjectivity, Jon Kabat-Zinn says, "We tend to dismiss subjective experience as if there's no objectivity within subjectivity. But there is actually a tremendous amount of objective self-observing in meditation practice. And the more you cultivate that discipline, the less likely you will be to filter your experience through internal biases." Daniel Goleman adds, "That's big news for science, which has largely dismissed subjective observation as a reliable source of data. But Buddhists, on the other hand, have recognized its usefulness for centuries." When asked if Buddhist practice, such as loving kindness meditation, which incorporates the cultivation of positive mind states, differs significantly form Western psychology, Matthieu Ricard says, "Pathologies or negative mind-states, have attracted most of the attention in psychology because they are characterized by such intense suffering. But from a Buddhist perspective, so-called 'normal' is still characterized by pervasive suffering. The emerging field of positive psychology represents a shift in focus to this ongoing 'normal' suffering." Wallace further points out, "The big innovation of Buddhism is not in recognizing the suffering of a normal life, but in pointing out that mental afflictions are not intrinsic to the human psyche. Recent scientific research has shown that these afflictive tendencies of mind can be measurably lessened through Buddhist practice. But Buddhism is making a much stronger claim: that the mind at its deepest level has the nature of luminosity of innate bliss, and is altogether free of mental affliction. That's a big hypothesis. We can't test it now, but we can head in that direction."
Article PDF All excerpts and PDF ? Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, Spring 2005, Vol. XIV No. 3

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Tricycle Magazine Article, Jon Kabat-Zinn Book - Spring, 2005
In "Healing Mind, Healing Body," Tricycle Magazine gives a short excerpt from Jon Kabat-Zinn's book, Coming to Our Senses, about a case study on how mindfulness practice can aid medical treatment. The story describes how Kabat-Zinn became involved with a study on the positive aspects of meditation with psoriasis patients at the University of Massachusetts Department of Medicine in the early 1980s. After meeting with Jeff Bernhard, the chief of dermatology at the university, the two decided to test the effects of meditation on healing psoriasis. They offered standing meditation, breathing meditation, hearing meditation, and watching-the-mind-get-stressed-out meditation to psoriasis patients undergoing phototherapy treatments. They also included a visualization about the skin healing in response to the light as part of the meditation in the later stages of treatment. They used two groups of patients, one that meditated and one that did not. Kabat-Zinn says, "We found that the meditators healed faster than the non-meditators, . . . almost four times as rapidly." He notes, "The psoriasis study is an example of what is now being call 'integrative medicine,' because it integrates mind-body interventions such as meditations right into the delivery of more conventional medical treatments." Kabat-Zinn further notes that the study has numerous implications. The mind can positively influence healing in some circumstances, and participatory medicine is a big money-saver for both the patient and the medical system. All excerpts ? Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, Spring 2005, Vol. XIV No. 3

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Psychology Today Article - February, 2005 The February issue of Psychology Today is almost entirely devoted to happiness. The lead story, "Happy Hour" written by Psychology Today staff writer Carlin Flora, cites the research of numerous psychologists on happiness. While not specifically mentioning the Mind and Life Institute, the article draws from Davidson's research and two other Mind and Life Institute meeting participants about their findings on happiness. Flora writes, Davidson's findings suggest "that if we train ourselves to become more mindful and slow down our sense of passing time, we can learn to monitor our moods and thoughts before they spiral downward. We can, in other words, make ourselves happier." Besides Davidson, the article extensively quotes psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Daniel Gilbert. Kahneman, who won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2003 for his research on irrationality and decision making, has switched his attention to well-being. Psychology Today editor Kaja Perina writes in her editor's note at the beginning of the magazine that Kahneman is studying one of today's hottest areas of psychology--behavioral decision theory. Perina says, "In 'Happy Hour,' Kahneman explains how memory looms large--and wrong--when it comes to figuring out what makes us happy." When discussing Kahneman's research, Flora quotes him, "The point is that we shouldn't measure our lives on the quality of our memories alone." Flora explains Kahneman's theory: "He doesn't simply mean we should be more spontaneous--in fact, he points out that since time is our most valuable resource, we should pay careful attention to how we spend it. We need to vigilantly protect our time from the biases of our evaluating self by not relying on memory alone. Otherwise, we risk wasting it in ways that contradict our values and don't bring us happiness." Flora further writes, "Kahneman acknowledges the power of the well-being 'set point,' but he still thinks that we can influence our own happiness in small ways--by attending to the moment, and by choosing activities that engage rather than numb our minds. If we heed what does give us immediate pleasure, and if we are skeptical of our error-riddled memories and predictions, we can learn to spend our money, time and attention in ways that make us happier." She also discusses Gilbert's work with Tim Wilson at the University of Virginia on predicting the future to find happiness. Flora writes, Gilbert has found that we are almost always wrong in predicting how we'll feel in the future. To read the complete article, go to the Psychology Today website at http://cms.psychologytoday.com/articles/2005.html

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Time Magazine Article - Monday, January 17, 2005
The Time Magazine story, written by associate editor of Times' science, environment and space section Michael D. Lemonick, discussed the results of numerous studies that center on happiness. In "The Biology of Joy" published January 17, Lemonick said Richard Davidson's research shows that "happiness isn't just a vague, ineffable feeling; it's a physical state of the brain ? one that you can induce deliberately." The writer also mentioned that Davidson's research shows that "subjects in Davidson's experiments have lower levels of cortisol, a hormone produced by the adrenal gland in response to stress ? and cortisol is known to depress immune function." Although the article didn't mention the Mind and Life Institute, Davidson's work is a direct result of the institute's meeting with scientists and the Dalai Lama. Lemonick also quoted Dacher Keltner, a psychologist at the University of California-Berkeley and Mind and Life meeting participant, regarding the lack of research on positive emotions, dopamine pathways, and the opioid system: "We're just beginning to apply a lens to all those parts of the nervous system in which the positive emotions are embodied. This is really neat territory." Lemonick quoted Keltner on the funding of happiness research: "As the findings trickle in showing that positive emotions and happiness make your immune system function better, or help you battle disease, or help you live longer, then you're into fundable territory."

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London Financial Times Article - Monday, January 14, 2005
In his article "Uplifting Thoughts" for the London Financial Times, writer Stephen Pincock said Davidson's "work suggests that happiness is a skill than can be learned." The article mentions the Mind and Life Institute and talks about how Davidson's work stems from ongoing meetings since 1987 between scientists and the Dalai Lama. The article extensively quotes Matthieu Ricard, a Buddhist monk, biochemist, and Mind and Life Institute board member. Many of the quotes came from Ricard's recent talk at London's French Institute, the official French government center on language and culture in London since 1910. Pincock captured Ricard's thoughts on the Wisconsin study with this quote: "The main point is to rehabilitate the notion of 'mind training'. We consider that attention, altruism and compassion, emotional balance and happiness are skills that can be trained. Meditation is not a mere relaxation method but an in-depth, long-term cultivation of human qualities."

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Washington Post Article - Monday, January 3, 2005
The Washington Post ran a story entitled "Meditation Gives Brain a Charge, Study Finds" Monday, January 3, 2005. The story cites Professor Richard Davidson's brain studies using Buddhist monks at the University of Wisconsin. While this article does not mention the Mind and Life Institute by name, the impetus for this research came from our Mind and Life meetings. Dr. Davidson is on the board of MLI, as is co-researcher and collaborator Matthieu Ricard. Antoine Lutz, another researcher in the study, was a student of MLI co-founder Francisco Varela before becoming a post doc at Dr. Davidson's lab in Wisconsin. In his story, Washington Post staff writer Marc Kaufman said, "Brain research is beginning to produce concrete evidence for something that Buddhist practitioners of meditation have maintained for centuries: Mental discipline and meditative practice can change the workings of the brain and allow people to achieve different levels of awareness." Davidson, a neuroscientist at the university's new $10 million W. M. Keck Laboratory for Functional Brain Imaging and Behavior, is a Mind and Life Institute board member. He was also the scientific coordinator and meeting moderator for the Mind and Life XII neuroplasticity meeting held in Dharamsala October 18-22, 2004. Kaufman wrote, "Davidson says . . . the results of the meditation study . . . take the concept of neuroplasticity a step further by showing that mental training through meditation (and presumably other disciplines) can itself change the inner workings and circuitry of the brain." Davidson's latest results from the meditation study were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in November.

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Science & Theology News Article - December, 2004
The December 2004 issue of Science & Theology News features an article entitled "Buddhism & Science for a Healthy Mind," based on our Mind and Life XII neuroplasticity meeting held in Dharamsala, India October 18-22, 2004. Buddhism & Science for a Healthy Mind Abstract The 12th annual Mind and Life Institute Conference in India emphasized that Buddhism and science can work together to uncover the secrets of the mind. Geetinder Garewal reports from India on key conference events, including the topics of neuroplasticity and meditation, in December's Science & Theology News.

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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Article - November, 2004
In 2001, at the Mind and Life IX meeting at Madison, Wisconsin, Richard Davidson, Matthieu Ricard, and Antoine Lutz began a research study imaging the brains of Tibetan Monks while they were meditating. The first paper reporting the results of that study was just published in the November 16 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The article is titled "Long-Term Meditators Self-Induce High-Amplitude Gamma Synchrony During Mental Practice." Other papers from this study are being prepared as well. The publication of this paper in one of the world's most prestigious scientific journals is an important milestone for science, and the Mind and Life Institute, and suggests that mental training may induce short-term and long-term changes to the brain Article abstract: Practitioners understand "meditation," or mental training, to be a process of familiarization with one's own mental life leading to long-lasting changes in cognition and emotion. Little is known about this process and its impact on the brain. Here we find that long-term Buddhist practitioners self-induce sustained electroencephalographic high-amplitude gamma-band oscillations and phase-synchrony during meditation. These electroencephalogram patterns differ from those of controls, in particular over lateral frontoparietal electrodes. In addition, the ratio of gamma-band activity (25-42 Hz) to slow oscillatory activity (4-13 Hz) is initially higher in the resting baseline before meditation for the practitioners than the controls over medial frontoparietal electrodes. This difference increases sharply during meditation over most of the scalp electrodes and remains higher than the initial baseline in the post-meditation baseline. These data suggest that mental training involves temporal integrative mechanisms and may induce short-term and long-term neural changes. The complete article can be read at www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/101/46/16369

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Wall Street Journal Article - November, 2004
The November 5 issue of the Wall Street Journal featured an article by Sharon Begley titled "Scans of Monks Brains Show Meditation Alters Structure, Functioning" on our October 18-22 Mind and Life XII Neuroplasticity meeting held in Dharamsala, India. Article abstract: All of the Dalai Lama's guests peered intently at the brain scan projected onto screens at either end of the room, but what different guests they were. On one side sat five neuroscientists, united in their belief that physical processes in the brain can explain all the wonders of the mind, without appeal to anything spiritual or nonphysical. Facing them sat dozens of Tibetan Buddhist monks in burgundy-and-saffron robes, convinced that one round-faced young man in their midst is the reincarnation of one of the Dalai Lama's late teachers, that another is the reincarnation of a 12th-century monk, and that the entity we call "mind" is not, as neuroscience says, just a manifestation of the brain. It was not, in other words, your typical science meeting.

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Greater Good Article - Fall, 2004
The Fall 2004 issue of Greater Good contains a story about how teachers can use meditation and stress reduction techniques to develop skills and practices that rein in their anxieties and cultivate positive emotions. Greater Good is a magazine published bi-annually by the Center for the Development of Peace and Well-Being at the University of California, Berkeley. Dacher Keltner, professor of psychology at UCB and a Mind and Life Institute meeting participant, is co-director of the center. In the story "Caring for the Caregivers," UCB journalism graduate student Sarita Tukaram discusses two programs, both drawing on Eastern philosophy, that help teachers deal with stress in their jobs. One of those programs, Cultivating Emotional Balance (CEB), is spearheaded by Psychologist Margaret Kemeny and other researchers at University of California, San Francisco. Kemeny is a 2005 Mind and Life Summer Researcy Institute faculty member. CEB tests whether Eastern philosophy and meditation can bolster teachers' capacities for empathy and compassion, plus help them handle the everyday emotional demands of their work. Although the story doesn't mention the Mind and Life Institute, CEB originated from the 2000 meeting with the Dalai Lama on Destructive Emotions. Tukaram relates the work of Richard Davidson and Jon Kabat-Zinn, both Mind and Life Institute board members, on mindfulness meditation to the foundation of CEB. The writer reports, "According to Kemeny, the principal investigator, the results showed that a heightened emotional awareness also encouraged a heightened sense of self. After the training, participants showed an increase in affection for others and a decrease in their negative reactions to stress." A clinical trial of CEB began in January 2005 in San Francisco. As in the pilot study, a seven-part curriculum trains participants in skills such as meditation, recognizing emotions communicated by other people's facial expressions, and strategies to counteract negative emotions.

Read more.

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Smithsonian Magazine Article - May, 2004 Below is a brief excerpt, with the website link for the entire article following. The article covers the September, 2003 "Investigating the Mind" meeting and related press conference.

The (Scientific) Pursuit of Happiness What does the Dalai Lama have to teach psychologists about joy and contentment?

By Chip Brown You'd think a scientifically literate and technologically sophisticated society that has established the pursuit of happiness as an unalienable right would know a little more about what the damn thing entails. But scientists long ago ceded the investigation of happiness to ministers, novelists, therapists, travel agents, brewers, ad executives and vice squads. When medical scientists did think about happiness, they tended to view it in the negative, as freedom from depression. Such is the bias that a recent survey of 30 years of psychology publications counted 46,000 papers on depression-and a piddling 400 on joy. As Martin Seligman, a University of Pennsylvania professor and former president of the American Psychological Association, put it in 1998: "Social science now finds itself in almost total darkness about the qualities that make life most worth living." This state of affairs undoubtedly has a lot to do with why a panel of psychologists and a crowd of 1,200 gathered at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) this past September to hear a 68-year-old Tibetan named Tenzin Gyatso, better known as His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the 14th manifestation of the Buddha of Compassion, Nobel Peace Prize winner and exiled leader of Tibet. As the chief exponent of a 2,500-year-old religion dedicated to the mitigation of suffering, he is sort of the high priest of happiness. And while he may not know more about the secrets of well-being than his 13 predecessors, he has brought the Buddhist philosophy of joyful compassion to vast audiences in the West. His MIT appearance was followed by a lecture at the Fleet Center in Boston before some 13,000 people and rock-star-size crowds at venues in other American cities. His 1998 book The Art of Happiness (coauthored by psychiatrist Howard C. Cutler) was a New York Times bestseller, assuring readers that the purpose of life is to "seek happiness" and that "the very motion of our life is toward happiness."

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