ROCHESTER, MINN. The press that followed a recent visit by the Dalai Lama to the Mayo Clinic focused primarily on the spiritual leader's comments about the Chinese crackdown on protest in Tibet. It isn't hard to imagine why. The meeting's contentious international backdrop a conflict underscored by the sidewalk appearance of a strangely polished crew of 50 or so pro-Chinese demonstrators mounting a lonely crusade to tarnish the cause of Tibetan autonomy was an easier tale to tell than the less easily digested topic of the daylong event itself.
The oversight was unfortunate, because the case being made during the April 16 colloquium titled "Investigating the Mind-Body Connection: The Science and Clinical Applications of Meditation," seems far more destabilizing than the political movement in Tibet.
It's one thing to ponder the irony of a professional-seeming protest in defense of a government that does not allow protest. It's quite another thing to witness the brain trust behind the brand more associated with Western medicine than any other giving forum to the emerging science of mindfulness training, acceptance, positive thinking and compassion. The first cause is about political change. The second is cosmological.
The Buddhist meditative tradition
The Dalai Lama's prescription is that of the Buddhist meditative tradition: selecting and focusing on positive mental states such as compassion, gratitude and joy, while challenging negative mental states such as anger, jealousy, anxiety and a distracted state of being. In practice this means daily meditative practice intent on clearing mental clutter and developing more clarity of attention and moment-by-moment awareness.
The Dalai Lama has long believed that so-called mindfulness meditation has beneficial effects on human health and well-being, and thanks to research conducted by Davidson and others, we now know that the brain and body do indeed change for the better as a result of such practice, and through measurable physiological pathways more complex than had previously been imagined.
Researchers have known for years, for example, that a bilateral brain region known as the prefrontal cortex, or PFC, is involved in developing responses to emotionally laden thoughts, and that the way we respond to the events and thoughts in our lives is often determined by whether the brain draws on the rights side of our PFC or its left. Operating below the level of awareness, the right side of the prefrontal cortex responds to problems with an eye toward punishments and avenues of withdrawal, while the left side processes thoughts which are generally positive and tuned to rewards. Damage the left prefrontal cortex and depression increases; those who tend to preferentially use the left side of their prefrontal cortex tend to get over problems faster than do those who process emotion-laden thoughts from the right. Significant for the discussion of physical health, those who preferentially use the left prefrontal cortex show lower baseline levels of the stress hormone cortisol.
The dangers of chronic frustration
A separate area of research has linked chronic frustration with disruption of your heart-rate variability, which, sustained over time, the body begins to recognize as its baseline state, bringing about an inhibition of the vital bodily calming mechanism that is your parasympathetic nervous system. Feel frustrated long enough and your body ceases to calm itself.
By wiring EEG sensors to the heads of Buddhist monks and those attempting to meditate for the first time, then examining brain activity as expressed on functional MRI images, Davidson and Kabat-Zinn have learned that meditation employs the left prefrontal cortex some monks he has studied have greater left prefrontal orientation than ever previously observed and that over time, meditative practice can change the orientation from the right to the left of those who take up the activity. Brain circuitry is not fixed, in other words. To the contrary, said Davidson during a research-based session at Mayo, "the brain is the organ that is built to change in response to training. Happiness, compassion, and clarity of attention are the product of skills, and these skills can be enhanced through mental training."
After hearing the case that meditative mental training can help people stay healthier and recover more quickly from illness, the Mayo audience of 350 or so faculty and staff entered more culturally problematic territory subject matter that seemed to be talked around as much as it was examined. In short, while medicine is beginning to take seriously the notion that the cultivation of compassion and mindfulness is beneficial for physical health, medicine as practiced today is often antithetical to the very mindfulness and spiritual "present-ness" sought after in meditative practice.
An East-West paradox?
The clinic may have established a "mind-body" Department of Integrative Medicine and gathered with earnest enthusiasm to hear from the top names in mind-body research, but Mayo is nothing if not the face of Western medicine in all its dichotomous cleaving of the spirit from the biology, both in culture and practice. The medical embrace of meditative compassion would seem to face a paradox: The grueling rise to the highest levels of medical specialization does not appear conducive to regular breaks for contemplative meditative practice, nor does the culture of omnipotence, authority and spirit of conquest within medical training seem a smooth fit for the sense of acceptance embodied in Buddhism.
The bad news came in large part from Roshi Joan Halifax, a Zen priest and medical anthropologist whose remarks suggested that embracing the Buddhist prescription will likely require more than stocking the patient information center with brochures on the value of meditation. For example, the Dalai Lama's thoughts on death are clear: "I think the most important thing," according to a Web collection of his sayings, "is to try and do our best to ensure that dying person may depart quietly, with serenity and in a peace." Caregivers of those at the end of life experience high rates of burnout, said Halifax, due to the "moral stress" brought on by the damage done to this peace by conflicting agendas of medicine in the face of death.
"A lot of clinicians feel reluctant to speak openly about the trajectory of an illness," she said, "with death being the end of the road." Halifax described the multipronged source of the physician's moral stress that leads him or her to avoid the dying: interventions which cause pain and suffering, lack of communication about the goals of care, and "the prolonging of dying through technology." While she acknowledged their role in transitory illness, flashing a picture of an iconic string of ICU life preserving tubes and machinery, she said simply, "This is our nightmare, to be put on a respirator."
Cultivating compassion, wisdom in the face of death
Halifax advocated helping physicians and caregivers in "cultivating compassion and wisdom in the presence of death." The ability to "presence pain and suffering without pitying, consoling or denying," said Halifax, requires "a quality of attention that is panoramic, perceptive and nonjudgmental." While meditative practice would seem to develop the skill in question, hanging over her argument was a question that went unasked: How likely are these skills to be developed in medical training, much less the culture and bureaucracy of large medical centers like Mayo? Research may support the benefits of meditative practice for patients, but if they are to care for the dying and gravely ill, physicians would appear to need an extra dose the same medicine. Is the Buddhist tradition even possible within the umbrella of Western medicine?
"Allow yourself to experience that futility," she said when a Mayo doctor from Brazil asked how he should handle his negative emotions that gave rise when watching patients in his homeland die unnecessarily due to a lack of resources. "To be with things as they are. There is still a resource that is there your presence."
For the Mayo brothers, looking down from nearby oversize vintage photos upon the gathering, this could not have seemed a stranger request for the heirs to their legacy. Nor could the answer given to a similar question a few minutes later and which had been put to Mattieu Ricard, a French-born monk from Katmandu and a subject of Davidson's EEG experiments on the brain activity of expert level meditation.
"Transform your attitude to the suffering person," said Ricard, who has spent more than 10,000 hours in contemplative meditation. "Let your heart become a mass of brilliant white light, and the suffering becomes dissolved in it."
The nature of compassion and suffering
After a lunch-hour break, the audience stood silently to greet the Dalai Lama, a sometimes impish figure who held forth bare-armed and robed from an armchair in the center of the stage. Answering questions put to him by Goleman and later the audience, the Dalai Lama alternated from English to long statements toward his interpreter, presumably in Tibetic, touching on the nature of compassion and suffering and its intersection with medical care. He rambled at times in a way that indicated no worries about social pressures like staying on message, making easily digestible bullet points, winning over his audience and yet winning over his audience regardless.
He explained his position that the human dilemma is one whereby anger and attachment while useful if a transitory emotion in species throughout the animal kingdom are given undue extension by the human skill for imagination, with negative results.
"This is where the problems arise," he said. "Because of this, we need a special effort to increase our affection."
He called compassion "an immune system for the toxins of the mind." He also, early in his remarks, slipped in mention of the problem at hand, a statement that sparked no shortage of nervous laughter in the highly credentialed crowd.
"In Tibet we have a saying," he said. "The physician is a great scholar, but his medicine is not effective because his heart is not that good."
Paul Scott is a freelance writer based in Rochester.
Health and happiness are two of the universal goals of all people. Many philosophers, spiritual teachers, the world's major religions, including Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, have prized gratitude as a spiritually beneficial emotional state. Now doctors and psychologists have joined in the chorus.
Medical research indicates that there is something you can do each day to be healthier and happier, and it will cost you nothing and take very little time. Be grateful. Dr Michael McCollough, of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, and Dr Robert Emmons, of the University of California at Davis, say their scientific study indicates that gratitude plays a significant role in a person's sense of well-being.
A Healthier Lifestyle
Grateful people: Those who embrace gratitude as a permanent trait rather than an occasional state of mind have an edge on the not-so-grateful when it comes to health.
Stress Buster
"Gratitude research suggests that feelings of thankfulness have tremendous positive value in helping people cope with daily problems, especially stress," the researchers say.
Immune Booster
Grateful people tend to be more optimistic, a characteristic that the boosts the immune system. Dr Lisa Aspinwall, professor of psychology at the University of Utah, reported on some very interesting studies linking optimism to better immune function. In one, researchers compared the immune systems of healthy, first-year law students under stress. They found that students who were optimistic (based on survey responses) maintained higher numbers of healthy blood cells that protect the immune system, compared with their more pessimistic classmates.
Optimism also has a positive health impact on people with compromised health. In separate studies, patients diagnosed with AIDS, as well as those preparing to undergo surgery, had better health outcomes when they maintained attitudes of optimism.
Heart Health
Clinical psychologist Blair Justice, PhD, professor emeritus of psychology at the UT School of Public Health at Houston, states, "A growing body of research supports the notion that rediscovering a sense of abundance by thinking about those people and things we love lowers the risks of coronary events."
GRATITUDE STRATEGIES
Practise: Start each day by simply focusing on three to five things for which you can be grateful. This will increase your health and happiness. Everyone has something to be grateful for. Just being alive is a big one. Being able to breathe, or having enough money for lunch, or a roof over your head are all things we can be grateful that we have, but we often take these for granted.
Express your gratitude to someone else for an even stronger dose of health and happiness. Holding the thought of gratitude and expressing that gratitude to the friend will benefit both of you.
Record your gratitude. Some people have found even greater rewards from practising gratitude when they make a daily list of things they are grateful for in a 'gratitude journal'. This practice is made even more powerful when they find time to reread their gratitude lists.
Share your gratitude. Gratitude becomes infectious. Look for ways to share your blessings. It can express itself in simple ways like with a smile, a blessing, a prayer, a note or phone call. Just do it.
Thank you for reading this; I'm so grateful that you did.
That's the mind-set of Americans who can't stomach exchanging holiday presents. They aren't grinches or scrooges. They just reject what they consider the wastefulness and stress of the season.
"Over the years, I have watched as the gift-exchanging part of the family Christmas slowly became more and more the reason to get together and how it eventually seemed to become the showcase event of the day," said Lora-Lee Blalock, 42, a homemaker and artist in Austin, Texas.
Blalock's childhood memories of the holiday radiate warmth: "We'd all travel from our homes and gather at my grandparents' house to spend the day eating, playing games, making music together, watching Christmas specials on the TV and just spending time talking and being a family." Gifts were secondary.
Blalock said that in recent years she pestered her family to drop the gifts. This year, they're trying it.
Pam Frese, an anthropologist at the College of Wooster in Ohio, said the practice seems to be a dismissal of commercial obsession. "The consumer culture doesn't mean anything to them," Frese said.
That's the Rev. Billy's message. No, beneath the blond pompadour and white suit, he's not a real pastor, but he does preach with a Jimmy Swaggart lilt about what he calls the "Shopocalypse." The New York-based performer-activist travels the country with his Church of Stop Shopping Gospel Choir evangelizing uninvited at chain stores and is the subject of the new film, What Would Jesus Buy?
Rev. Billy (aka Bill Talen) says corporate gluttony has whipped holiday sentiment into an obligation to spend on gifts recipients might not even want, generating "the opposite of excitement, which is dread."
"This year, we need to take Christmas back," the self-proclaimed minister said. "Let's have a creative Christmas."
The Parsons family has made that a goal.
Last year, Noah and Sabrina Parsons of Eugene, Ore., were disgusted by the mounds of wrapping paper and packaging encasing their two young sons' gifts, which required a trip to the dump. The Parsonses, who run a software company for small businesses, decided no presents this year.
"At the end of the day, you really don't feel you've gained anything with all this stuff," said Sabrina Parsons, 34.
This Christmas, the couple and their children, Timmy, 3, and Leo, 15 months, will funnel what they would have spent on gifts into a family trip to Mexico. It's the kickoff to what they hope becomes a holiday tradition.
The parents figure they'll start now, so when their sons are old enough to start asking questions, Mom and Dad can respond: "You're not going to get gifts, but you're getting to go to the beach or getting to go skiing or you're going to this really cool place you've never been to before," said Noah Parsons, 33.
Besides, the Parsons boys would be hard-pressed to recall what they got last year.
Gift amnesia strikes adults, too. Online polling may not be scientific, but consider this: 41% of Americans 18 and older polled via the Web said they couldn't remember their best holiday gift from last year. San Francisco-based Zoomerang conducted the survey in November for Excitations, a Sterling, Va., company specializing in experience-oriented gifts, including hang gliding.
From a religious standpoint, some are put off by how gift-heavy the holidays have become.
Sister Mary Louise Foley, campus minister at the University of Dayton, said worshippers should reflect: What is your perfect Christmas? Then try to come as close as possible. If that means no gifts, so be it.
If you wake up stressed about Christmas preparations, Foley said, think about "what does a woman in Iraq feel like as she gets up this morning? It makes some of our worrying so small in comparison."
With Hanukkah so close to Christmas, the Jewish holiday has become subject to the same purchasing pressures.
"Hanukkah was a very minor celebration in terms of gifts and hoopla," said Rabbi David Fass of Temple Beth Sholom in New City, N.Y.
It's OK for families to exchange gifts during Hanukkah, Fass said, as long as the children know the genesis of the holiday it marks the victory of Jewish rebels over the Syrian-Greeks and the rededication of the temple in Jerusalem and do not regard it as just a time for presents.
Professing appreciation for a sense of community during the holidays, some have shaped their aversion to frenzied gift-giving into a tongue-in-cheek crusade.
Nina Paley, 39, an animator in New York, said her no-gifts awakening happened about 15 years ago, when she produced a comic strip called "Nina's Adventures" for alternative weekly papers. One holiday season, she based one of her strips on a friend who plunged further into debt buying presents.
From this, Paley's Christmas Resistance Movement arose. Its website www.xmasresistance.org proclaims, "No Shopping No Presents No Guilt!" The campaign is equal opportunity, applying to Hanukkah, Kwanzaa or any holiday when people might feel compelled to give gifts.
Paley herself grew up in a secular Jewish home, though her family did exchange presents for Hanukkah. Whatever the occasion, mandatory offerings cheapen the moment, she said.
Obligatory "material gifts often function as a distraction from love or lack thereof rather than a conduit," Paley said. "By making material gifts representations of love, love itself becomes a commodity. How can that not make one feel empty and hollow?"
Xerpi