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January 14, 2005
The Power of Meditation
Washinton Post had an article on meditation (you have register at WP to read it).
Here I am providing a summary of the article and my comments.
Summary:
Washington Post reports that long term meditation practice changes the brain more permanently and those changes show up as high frequency gamma waves and increased brain coordination.
Dr. Richard Davidson, a professor at the university of Washington Laboratory for Functional Brain Imaging and Behavior found that the long term meditation practitioners "showed brain activation on a scale we have never seen before." It means that the brain is capable of changing and modifying itself at any age and it can be trained and modified in ways many scientists did not believe.
H. H. Dalai Lama had sent eight long term meditators � who have between 10,000 � 50,000 hours of meditation practice over time periods of 15-40 years. They were asked to meditate on unconditional compassion or metta bhavana. It is described as �unrestricted readiness and availability to help living beings.� The researchers found that there was a much greater activation of fast-moving and unusually powerful gamma waves and the movement of those waves through the brain was far better organized and coordinated in the monks than the control subjects (students with limited amount of meditation experience).
In their studies, researchers have found that focus, memory, learning and heightened awareness were demonstrated in these monks. Dr. Davidson concludes that meditation probably produces permanent changes and validates research by Jon Kabat-Zinn of the University of Massachusetts.
Commentary:
What does this research mean to you and me? Meditation is much more important in the current complex world than ever before. As the complexity increases, the less control we have and the less control we experience, the more stress one feels. More the stress, less the creativity, the productivity and the health. In these days of increasing competition and health care costs, it means disaster in terms of both bottom line HR costs and top line growth if your company is dependent on the employee innovation and knowledge creation.
Encouraging people to meditate seems to have many tangible benefits to organizations. But now the question is, is it only the particular kinds of meditation (Tibetan Nyingmapa and Kagyupa traditions) that has this kind of effect or other kinds of meditations are equally good? I know there have been many research studies on transcendental meditation, Vipassana meditation and Sudarshana Kriya approach (more recently). There are also many scientific studies on Yoga based approaches. Are they as conclusive and definitive as Dr. Davidson�s studies?
I am sure of one thing. I am going to continue my short meditation practice with more commitment than before. I am glad we have been doing 5 minute silent meditation at the beginning and the end of our Practical Vedanta sessions on Thursday.
Here is a reflection from a dear friend and a teacher Dr. Mohan Rao in Bangalore. He is a remarkable person with a Ph.D. in Robotics and a has long spiritual practice. Here are his views.
I take this opportunity to express my feelings about any research of this kind.
Meditation is to transcend the mind and Science is to get involved with the mind. A methodology or study in the domain of the mind (intellect) can never be able to understand the effects beyond the mind.
Mind is used to covert energy from matter and this is a routine function of Science. Any other modern fields like Management, Economics, Medicine etc. are support systems for this purpose either to increase the energy conversion or to look into the side effects of the same. Science knows nothing about the conversion of matter from energy.
When you learn to transcend the mind through the meditation, the final result is not the alteration of brain cells but the conversion of energy to matter.
Science deals with the chatter of mind and its prominence whereas the meditation dissolves the mind.
In general the principle in measurement science is "An inferior entity cannot measure a Superior entity". This is common sense and also right sense for internal growth. So my advice is please do not get impressed by these childish ideas and waste time.
What are your comments and reflections?
Posted by pkaipa at January 14, 2005 04:49 PM
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