more meditating in laboratories news

Shinzen coordinates a lab test, journalist Jeff Warren writes up the experience.

nuonym.com/inscapes-enlightenment-and-science/

Nice article, thanks Ona!

One thing I that keeps bugging me about the "meditator brain scan" experiments is a methodical question that may be unanswerable due to the subjectivity of the experience. Still, I'll try an analogy:

Imagine scientists were doing these fMRI tests on practitioners of Arithmetic. They'd see all these areas of the brain light up or dim down, a pattern characteristic of "this person is doing sums in their head".

What these patterns won't show, however, is whether the results are correct. The brains of two Arithmeticists will show the same characteristic patterns of activation regardless of whether they are getting their sums right or wrong. It's just the "doing sums" pattern which shows up. There is no "doing sums correctly" pattern.

Now in the case of Arithmetic, the correctness of the sums can be checked independently from the fMRI data. I know they do interviews of the meditators in addition to the actual scans, but, well, ... "33 + 77 = 100" is just wrong, while "I can access third Jhana" may or may not be the case, depending on many factors.

I usually summarize my reservations by pointing out that we might just as well make scans of meditator's knee joints. At least that way, we'd know they really were sitting cross-legged for years and years

On the other hand, I find this research really interesting. Just the residual scientist in me who keeps shaking its head. But it's got used to talking to deities I don't even believe in, too, so there

Cheers,
Florian

My main take on it (and I have participated in one of these studies) is that if this kind of research helps motivate some people to engage with a personal practice, then that's great. All other results/conclusions/purposes are pretty much meaningless to me. Some people are inspired to start meditating because "science says its real" - great. Go for it. The ultimate pragmatic dharma.

Let me elaborate a bit, actually. Had a long talk with a friend yesterday who teaches. She said what's remarkable in her group classes is the numbers of people who say things along the lines of "I tried meditating, but it's been really weird, and I don't know anyone I can talk to because they'll think I'm crazy."

So these kind of studies can provide additional (and secular) contexts for people to lose their fear of meditating or feel safe meditating, as well as giving them the confidence that meditation does indeed change things.

And that's great.

A small black hole forms and the magnetic force of the MRI machine cannot handle it. They had to keep recalibrating the machine. Experiment over.

I usually abhor these things as so crude in design as to produce uninteresting data.

This one is different, though-- because Shinzen knows how to frame the questions in a way that only a deeply experienced practitioner does, and because Jeff Warren is a much more engaged, curious, and skillful writer than in common. Remember that book I suggested about mind-states [long while back] Ona-- The Head Trip? That's Warren's work. And Tom's reference to the video of Shinzen talking about meditation and sleep on another thread, immediately reminded me of that book.

"The veteran meditators could do each of the resting states perfectly, but when it came to creating a contrasting condition, they were helpless. They had lost the ability to “let their minds wander” because they had long ago shed the habit of entertaining discursive narrative thoughts. They no longer worried about how their hair looked, or their to-do lists, or whether people thought they were annoying. Their minds were largely quiet. When thoughts did come – and they did still come – these subjects reported that the thoughts had a different quality, an unfixated quality. The thought “This MRI machine is extremely loud” might arise, but it would quickly evaporate. Thoughts seemed to emerge as-needed in response to different situations and would then disappear crisply into the clear backdrop of consciousness. In other words, these practitioners were always meditating." [emphasis mine]

Ona Kiser wrote: My main take on it (and I have participated in one of these studies) is that if this kind of research helps motivate some people to engage with a personal practice, then that's great.

Agreed.

It probably keeps bugging me because the "science says it's real" sentiment ... well ... is basing confidence on an unfounded assumption. But of course, we all start off from something. I started meditating again because Daniel said it's real, after all.

I'm coming to the conclusion that this is a personal pet-peeve of mine. I love science for science's sake, and I dislike it when science is misunderstood for something else, such as a moral directive. Scientists have no problem at all with being wrong, escpecially in cutting-edge research - improving on our imperfect and often wrong understanding of the universe is what science is all about. So to take one momentary snapshot of cutting-edge research and to assume that because scientists are researching it, it must be "real" is... well... not scientific at all It means scientists are researching it.

Scientists are just as delighted with researching something and finding that it's "not real" as they are with finding that it's "real".

That said, if the thought that scientific research is ongoing on the subject of the neurology of meditators is inspiring somone to take up meditation, more power to them! Original external motivation tends to be replaced by more immediate, personal experiences, after all.

Cheers,
Florian

P.S. I think I cracked this one for me: The thought of Dharma Missionaries knocking on doors and going "science says it's real" makes me cringe. Nothing more, nothing less. Thanks for bearing with me.

Florian, (edited to get to a different point and leave out so many examples) this reminds me of something...

1) I agree humans really value having an outside source (besides our own experience), particularly one of social authority (priest, scientist, ancient tome, patriarch of the family, doctor, corporate brand) to give credence to our opinions. It seems to be a natural tendency. I think it's about feeling safe: "look all those people are swimming the river at that crossing, it must be the safest place for me to try." To be alone - at an animal level - is often tied to being unprotected.

2) The tendency to evangelize also seems to be very human - and I think it is generally well intentioned (thought it can obviously spin off into something quite dysfunctional and harmful in certain contexts, like the Inquisition or Stalinist re-education camps). If you go on an amazing vacation, you tend to come home and tell everyone how amazing it was and that they should go, too. If you have a moving life experience, you tend to do the same, perhaps even more vigorously. The less self-awareness people have, the more likely they are to just do this without thinking about whether it fits the other person's needs or whether the other person is even interested.

Last year I spent an hour (unintentionally) once with a multi-level marketer, who was just overwrought with enthusiasm for the benefits of the program. I actually enjoyed seeing his happiness, the joy he got from telling me about how much it had changed his life. I think at an earlier time in my life I would have felt very overwhelmed and pressured to respond either defensively or by lying about being interested, but when it happened I simply had no such response, and didn't find it difficult to simply appreciate his enthusiasm as it was.

I had an incident I mentioned a couple months ago where a person laid into me for an hour or more about how stupid my (Catholic) practice was. That has been a bit more challenging to embrace - now and then it surfaces in some frustration or hurt - but I take it as an exercise in relating to those feelings, the delusions and conditions that drive them to the surface, and so on. There's nothing to be offended about, really. The person was acting out of their own conditions in a way they thought beneficial, or that defended their own identity (even though I wasn't attacking - my mere existence was perceived as an affront). It seems to me not productive to say "these damn evangelical types with their dogma!" but rather to look at my reactions as personal baggage I need to work with.

I seem to have a high level of tolerance for this stuff and a desire to always bring it back to the personal level (unpacking my own baggage), and that may just be my karma or personality or whatever.

Thoughts?