Meditation:

Secret of Happiness?

Increasingly compelling evidence is showing us that the systematic practice of meditation can dramatically change the way the brain functions.

With the blossoming of alternative culture in the 1960’s, many people were turned on to the idea of meditation. By the 1970’s many Westerners had traveled to India, Burma or Thailand to learn Buddhist forms of meditation. Daniel Goleman--later to write Emotional Intelligence--was one of these, as well as his friend Richard J Davidson, currently director of the Laboratory of Affective Neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

In his brain imaging studies Davidson found that the left pre-frontal cortex lit up when subjects were feeling happy, enthusiastic, joyful, or merely visualizing positive images, while the similar region on the right side was activated by unpleasant images and moods. Another key brain region, called the amygdala, is critical for the detection of fear signals and for the generation and persistence of the emotion of fear.

Davidson invited to his lab a number of experienced meditators, many of whom were Tibetan Buddhist monks, and studied their brains. What he found was that their left pre-frontal area appeared to light up consistently--not just during meditation. This finding is entirely consistent with the happy, smiling faces of Buddhists such as the Dalai Lama, even considering the hardship of their exile and the repression and thwarting of the self-determination of their country by the Chinese.

As Owen Flanagan, professor of philosophy at Duke University, remarked in an article in New Scientist of 22 May 2003, “Buddhists are not born happy. It is not reasonable to suppose that Tibetan Buddhists are born with a 'happiness gene'. The most reasonable hypothesis is there is something about conscientious Buddhist practice that results in the kind of happiness we all seek.”

Indeed Davidson’s later research, published in Psychosomatic Medicine, showed that ordinary, non-Buddhist working folk can be taught Insight Meditation in eight weeks and that the newly learned Vipassana practice actually changes the brain, perhaps permanently.

Another study by scientists found that meditation seems to be able to tame the amygdala. By doing so, meditators are able to recover more quickly after being emotionally provoked. They not only spontaneously show a shorter reaction time and come back to baseline more quickly but are also better able to actively control their emotion if you ask them to.

"Antidepressants are currently the favoured method for alleviating negative emotions, but no antidepressant makes a person happy,” Professor Flanagan wrote. “On the other hand, Buddhist meditation and mindfulness, which were developed 2,500 years before Prozac, can lead to profound happiness."

Paul Seto, director of the Buddhist Society of Great Britain, quoted in the London Times, said “Lots of people are excited about this, but we’ve known it all along. Buddhism hasn’t been waiting for scientific proof. We know it works.”

Writing in the May 29, 2003 issue of the International Herald Tribune, the Dalai Lama pointed out: “It’s worth noting that these methods are not just useful, but inexpensive. You don’t need a drug or an injection. You don’t have to be a Buddhist, or adopt any particular religious faith. Everybody has the potential to lead a peaceful, meaningful life….”

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