The science of meditation - Summary of the book

The science of meditation (2017)

by Daniel Goleman and Richard Davidson

There are two paths in meditation: the Wide Path and the Deep Path 

The Deep Path has two levels and the goal is enlightenment.  Following the path develop some traits: selflessness, equanimity, loving presence, impartial compassion 

• Level 1: the yogi style
• Level 2: householder style

The Wide Path has three levels and the goal is altered traits and better health performance

• Level 3: Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, Transcendental Meditation 
• Level 4: meditation apps
• Level 5: mental gym (in development)

Meditation is a generic term like sport.  Each one must find their practice and do it. 

Interest by academic research has been increasing: from 1970-2000 there were less than 10 articles per year, since 2000 there has been an exponential growth reaching more than 1000 articles in 2020.

Even short daily dose improves biology and emotional life.  There are many other possibilities for development, but also dangers. 

Ancient clues [70's]

Dan and Richie discovered meditation in India: watch sensations; discover how we claim sensation as "mine"; and how they change all the time.

Spiritual traditions "converge in description of an internal liberation from everyday worry, fixation, self-focus, ambivalence, and impulsiveness [...] a keenly alert 'nowness' and loving concern for all." 

Modern psychology was clueless about this range of human potential , and focused on fixing single problems (like anxiety) while Asian psychology offered ways to enhance our positive side.

Science identified waking, sleeping, and dreaming as major mental states, while samadhi was controversial without supporting evidence. 

Visuddhimagga (path to purification) is the meditation manual used by Dan and Richie as reference.  The method starts with concentration:

• Waterfall experience: acknowledge the monkey mind
• River-like experience: thinking activity slows down 
• Still lake experience: mental activity become very low.
• Jhana (7 levels): all distracting thoughts cease 

Buddha said that Jhana is not liberation.  Proposed the practice of open awareness, "an alert but non-reactive stance in attention." The path of insight start being aware of thoughts instead of following them, and seeing them as momentary experiences of mind. 

The after is the before for the next during

Abhidhamma is the compendia of Buddhist psychology, the theory for meditation manuals like Visuddhimagga.  Describes all the possible states of mind. 

• Unhealthy states of mind: desire, self-centeredness, sluggishness, agitation...
• Healthy states of mind: even-mindness, composure, ongoing mindfulness, and realistic confidence. 
• Body and mind together: buoyancy, flexibility, adaptability, and pliancy.

The signs of progress: shift from unhealthy to healthy, effortless stabilization in the healthy, embodying confidence, buoyancy,... 

The signs of stabilization: becoming traits not only meditation experiences

This Asian working model has been tested over centuries. 

The first course of "The Psychology of consciousness" by Dan, (1974) was a great success, but it still lack of scientific data and was very much based on guess-work.

The first article "The role of attention...transformation of consciousness" (1977) put emphasis on altered states, not yet on traits "missing the true point of the practice".  For the Dalai Lama "the true landmark of a meditator is that he has disciplined his mind by freeing it from negative emotions." 

The after is the before for the next during:

• After are the changes that last from previous practice
• Before is the baseline prior to the practice 
• During is the experience happening in the meditation 

"In other words, repeated practice of meditation results in lasting traits - the after" 

In 1975, Bruce McEwen presented a study in the society of neuroscience: stressful events produced lingering neural scars in a class of rodents.  It was the first time with a proof that experience can change brain, which was unthinkable until then.  The question that arise was "could meditation change brain too?" 

In 1992, Richard Davidson proposed in public the concept of neuroplasticity, that is repeated experience can change brain, i.e., behavior can be modelled by experience, not only by genetics.  Nature and nurture interact. 

There is evidence that brain of deaf people reused areas controlling hearing for visual processing. 

The same way than PSTD set the sensitivity of amygdala to threat very low, growing up in a secure environment, with empathic parents, sets stronger emotion regulation (altered traits). 

Western philosophy

For Aristotle the goal of life was a virtue-based eudaimonia (flourishing). Virtue is reached by the "right mean" between extremes: courage between risk-taking and cowardice, moderation between self-indulgence and ascetism.  But virtue need cultivation effort, including self-monitoring. 

Stoics pointed that feelings about life events, not the events themselves, determined happiness.  Equanimity is reached distinguishing what we can control from what we cannot. 

Reinhold Neibuhr's prayer:

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, 

Courage to change the things I can,

And wisdom to know the difference.

The Greco-Roman tradition considered qualities such integrity, kindness, patience, and humility, key to enduring well-being.  This is similar to the ideal in Buddhism of inner flourishing that nourishes "the very best within yourself."

Modern psychology uses the term well-being as term for the Aristotelian flourishing.  Carol Ryff proposes a model of well-being with six arms:

• Self-acceptance
• Personal growth
• Autonomy
• Mastery (of life)
• Satisfying relationships
• Life purpose

Meditation seems to cultivate some (many) of these capacities.

The best we had

First, there is a lack of replication of many studies on meditation effects.  This is a general problem of research, in particular in behavioral sciences.

Second, there is a bias of publication only positive results, while failures or non-significant results remain unpublished.

Third, the studies do not often distinguish the type of meditation practitioners do.  Max-Plank institute has un study with three types of practice:

• Breath focus: has a calming effect but don't create positive mood
• Loving-kindness is not calming, but create a positive mood
• Monitoring thoughts is neither calming or positive thinking inducer.

Fourth, counting hours of practice is often ignored

Fifth, to determine the uniqueness of meditation benefits studies must have control groups.  Any positive intervention has some positive effects on people, at least for a while.  Richard Davidson concluded that "many reported benefits can be attributed to expectation [NB: placebo?], social bonding in the group, instructor enthusiasm, and other."

Sixth, definition of mindfulness is ambiguous.  Some people use as a synonym of meditation, despite it is only one of the variety of methods.

1. Noticing when the mind wanders in the meditation: focus, wandering, noticing.  This aspect can also be called concentration.
2. Floating awareness that witness any experience without judging or reacting [Jon Kabat-Zinn definition]
3. The Pali term "sati" is translated also as awareness, attention, retention, and discernment.

Therefore, we must look to the trait changes described by the spiritual traditions.  They identified this changes that could reflect in the brain:

• Reactivity to disturbing events
• Compassion and empathy
• Attention circuitry
• The sense of self

Plus having a healthy body and a healthy mind.

A mind undisturbed

Our prefrontal cortex gives us the possibility to imagine the future.  This advantage is also a curse because we can worry about it and also regret the past, remembering it.  Epictetus said "it is not things that happen to us that are upsetting, but the view we take of these things."

Allan Wallace study on Mindful Attention Training, showing that amygdala response softened.  But untrained people also reduced response during attention exercise, indicating and altered stated not a trait.

Zen meditators respond to pain decoupling evaluation (this hurts) from sensation (this burns).

People suffering from PSTD and burnout are not longer able to put a halt to their brain's stress response.

Carol Ryff found that people with a strong sense of purpose in life recover quickly from stressors [in lab conditions]

Meditators had less cortisol during TSST (their Social Stress Test), and perceived the test less stressful than non-meditators.  The reason is the stronger connection between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala.  The stronger the link, the less the person is hijacked by emotions.

MBSR (Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction) reduce reactivity of amygdala, also long-term meditators has less reactivity and stronger connection between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala.  The good news is that resilience can be learned, and the trait is proportional to the amount of practice.

Primed for love

In the 70s, Sharon Shalzberg brought a method learned from Goenka, called metta in Pali, loosely translated as "loving-kindness".  In the format she proposed, you silently repeat phrases like "May I be safe, ""May I be healthy," and "May my life unfold with ease," first wishing this for yourself, the for people you love, then for neutral people, and finally for all the beings - even those whom you find difficult or who have harmed you.  In one or other version, this is the form better studied of meditation on compassion.

Kristin Neff added the term self-compassion.  Although in the east traditions compassion includes oneself, is not the case in the western tradition.  Neff definition of self-compassion includes being kind to yourself instead of being critical; seeing you failures and mistakes as part of your human condition rather than some personal failing; and just noticing the imperfections instead of ruminating about them.

Research classified empathy in three kinds

• Cognitive empathy let us understand how the other person thinks, we see their perspective.
• Emotional empathy make us feel what the other person feels.
• Empathic concern or caring lies at the heart of compassion.

In a experiment, subjects were instructed to share the emotions of people in the videos.  fRMI revealed that such empathy activated the insula, that is also active when we suffer.  A second group was instructed to feel love for those suffering, which activated the same part of brain that for maternal love.  In only eight hours of training their brain reacted clearly different.

The transformation of meditation on compassion, instead of emerging gradually as recovery from stress, emerges faster, even after a few minutes of exercise. And has a surprising and unique effect: the brain circuitry for happiness energizes too.

Tania Singer found that empathic resonance with the pain of others activates a neural alarm that tunes us with others' suffering, alerting us of potential danger.  But compassion involve circuits for feelings of warmth, love, and concern.  Moreover, compassion muted the empathic distress that can lead us to empathic exhaustion and burnout.

The Buddhist tradition of loving-kindness emphasizes extending our compassion to all the beings.  But how we can do that, including people that we don't like.  The Dalai Lama suggest to recognize the "oneness" of humankind, to realize that all them do not want suffering, and looking for happiness.  As he use to say "the first person to benefit from compassion practice is the one that feels it," which is confirmed by the activation of happiness circuits with the practice.  Also that "the ultimate source of peace is in the mind - which, far more our circumstances, determines our happiness."

Attention

In the 80s, Richard affective research showed how emotions push and pull attention.  In the 90s, contemplative neuroscience discovered how the prefrontal cortex manages our voluntary attention.  With the research some categorization appeared:

• Selective attention: focus on one lement, discarding others
• Vigilance, mantaining a constant level of attention
• Allocating attention, to notice small or rapid shifts on experience
• Goal focus, or cognitive control, keeping a goal, avoiding distractions
• Meta-awareness, tracking the quality of our awareness, noticing wandering or mistaking

Selective attention: Mindfulness (on MBSR training) strengthens the brain's ability to focus on one thing and ignore distractions.  The neural circuitry for selective attention can be trained.

Vigilance: Clifford Sharon and Allan Wallace study showed that meditators (on a three month retreat) improved vigilance.  Meditators who regularly practiced some form of "open monitoring"  (or open awareness) reversed the increase of attentional-blink of aging, even doing better than younger people.  Even very short training shows improvement (study with 17 minutes).

Allocating attention: Information consumes attention, therefore a wealth of information means a poverty of attention.  Heavy multitaskers are more easily distracted in general.  When they try to focus on a single task, they use more areas than just those relevant to it - a neural indicator of distraction.

Goal focus: Cognitive control can be strengthened.  With just ten-minute sessions of breath counting was enough to measure improvement, and the biggest gains were among the heavy multi-taskers.  Event academic result improve significantly.  Cognitive control also helps to manage impulses (response inhibition), and the benefits remains long after the training. 

Meta-awareness: in our normal perception there is an experience, and awareness lies in the background ("mere awareness").  Meta-awareness switch perception bring awareness to the forefront, and laying the experience in the background, holding judgement or emotional reactions. Therefore we can track our attention, noticing, for example, when our mind wondered from our goal, or noticing errors of what we do.  Meta-awareness also endow us to notice or unconscious bias.

While some aspects of attention improve just after a few hours (or minutes!) of practice, this doesn't mean it will last.  For example multi-tasking will weaken your focus.  Therefore, engaging in a regular practice is the way to lasting benefits.

Lightness of being

We live in a world our minds build rather than actually perceiving the endless details of what is happening.  In his first vipassana retreat Richard Davidson experienced heavy pain of long hours sitting in meditation posture.  It was unbearable until he had a shift of perception.  The pain didn't vanished, but he changed his relationship to it.  It became a raw sensation - not "my pain".  Every waking moment of our lives we construct our experience around a narrative where we are the star.  Similarly, we can deconstruct that story we center on ourselves by applying the right kind of awareness.

While we do nothing, there are brain regions that are highly activated (the default mode), even more that during a difficult cognitive task.  When scientists asked people what was going on in their minds during these periods of doing nothing, surprisingly, it was not nothing!  They reported their mind was wandering most often focused on the self: "How i am doing this experiment? I wonder what they are learning about me. I need to pass this phone call..."  All mental activity focused on "I" and "me" that is called "the monkey mind".

In a large study, Harvard researches asked thousands of people to report their mental focus and mood at random points through the day, and concluded that "a wandering mind is an unhappy mind". Because the self ruminates on what's bothering us, we feel relieved when we can turn it off.

Meditation instruct us to notice distraction, which activates the connection between the prefrontal cortex and the default mode.  This connection is stronger in long-term meditators that on beginners, and the stronger the connection, the quieter the monkey mind.

Vasubandhu (V c.) observed "So long as you grasp the self, you stay bounded to the world of suffering."  Cognitive science tell us that our sense of self emerges as a property of the many neural subsystems that thread together among other, streams, our memories, our perceptions, our emotions, and our thoughts.  Any of those would be insufficient for a full sense of self, but in the right combination we have the cozy feel of our unique being.  While almost every contemplative path holds lightness of being as a primary aim, paradoxically, there is very little research on it, but show three stages in how meditation leads to greater selflessness.

Novices in meditation keep their mind from wandering by activating neural wiring that can quiet the default mode area.  Our sense of self gets woven in an ongoing personal narrative that threads together disparate parts of our life into a coherent story line.  This narrator resides mainly in the default mode but brings together inputs from a broad range of brain areas that in themselves have nothing to do with the sense of self.  The seasoned meditators had less activation within the default areas.  Intriguingly, the long-term meditators would have the same lessened connectivity in the default mode during meditation than during resting.

Meditation manuals say letting go of thoughts, at first, requires some effort.  Later, though, whatever thoughts come to mind are like a thief entering an empty house: there is nothing to do and they just leave.  Also common sense tell us that learning a new skill takes hard work first and progressively becomes easier with practice.  Also happens in meditation according to neuroscience, prefrontal cortex no longer do effort to do the work.

Lessening the grip of the self, always a major goal of meditation practitioners, has been oddly ignored by research, focusing in more popular benefits like relaxation or better health.

Stickiness, the fixation to a mental state, emotion or thought, seems to reflect the dynamics of emotional circuitry of the brain, that underlie the traditional causes of suffering -attachment and aversion.  The Dalai Lama is a great living example of lack of stickiness.  Once was asked for his happiest moment of his life and he replied "I think right now."

Mind, body, and genome

The meta-analysis of research on meditation as treatment for pain concluded that is a good alternative to purely medical treatment.  However, no study has proof clinical improvement on chronic pain by removing the causes of pain -the relief comes in how people relate to pain.  Despite most people find relief after the MBSR training, many drop the practice after a while.

There is a study on how meditation lowered the cytokine levels, that are present in many skin reaction related to inflammatory process.

In a meta-analysis of studies with patients with heart issues, the results were "encouraging" but not conclusive.

Some studies find that meditation would have salutary epigenetic effects.  Loneliness raise levels of pro-inflammatory genes, while MBSR lowers them, and also lessen the feeling of loneliness. Another meta-analysis concluded that practicing mindfulness was associated with increased telomerase activity.

Concerning which kind of meditation has which kind of impact, Tania Singer compared loving-kindness with mindfulness practice.  Breath meditation was more relaxing, while loving-kindness and insight boosted heart rate, indicating more effort.  Richard Davidson found that long-term meditators had a slower breath rate just sitting still. 

Brain also changes shape with meditation, mainly in this four areas:

• The insula, which attunes to our internal state and powers emotional self-awareness
• Somatomotor areas, the main cortical hubs for sensing touch and pain
• Parts of the prefrontal cortex that operates in paying attention and in meta-awareness
• Regions in the cingulate cortex instrumental in self-regulation
• The orbitofrontal cortex, also part of the circuitry for self-regulation

At the age of fifty, longtime meditators' brains are "younger" by 7.5 years compared to non-meditators of the same age.  Meditation helps preserve the brain by slowing atrophy. While there is a doubt that atrophy could be reversed, it seems possible to make it slow down.

The current thinking is that meditation changes the relation with all kind of emotions, rather than changing the ration of positive to negative ones.  With higher levels of meditation practice, emotions seems to loose their power to pull us into their melodrama.

What is true, what's not, and what we don't know about the impact of meditation to get a better health?  There is evidence about the neural, biological, and behavioral changes produced by meditation, and how they help to maintain help -for instance, in better emotional  regulation and sharpened attention.  The point is that what we know make worth serious research about the benefits.

Meditation as psychotherapy

Tara Bennet-Goleman combined mindfulness with cognitive therapy in the 80s.  She understood that the lightness of thoughts viewed through the lenses of mindfulness, she got with the practice of vipassana, mirrors the principle of "decentering" of cognitive therapy, observing thoughts and emotions without identifying with them.  Bringing mindfulness into the sessions, complemented Dr Young's therapy with this lens of mind.  Observing breath mindfully, calmly, and clearly, helped patient to overcome panic attacks.  Independently, John Teasdale, and Mark Williams created the MBCT for depression, and showed that cut relapse by half, more than any medication.

Research also showed that mindfulness could lessen anxiety and depression, as well as pain, with a similar improvement of medication, but without troubling side-effects.  On the other hand, no benefits were found on eating habits, sleep, substance use, or weight problems.  When it came to other psychological troubles, like ugly moods, addictions, and poor attention, the meta-analysis found little or no evidence that any kind of meditation might help.  Actually, the use of control groups in the studies evaporated the evidence of benefits.  Therefore, the positive findings are only a reason to justify more extensive studies with more patients, during longer periods.

Apart from the equivalent effectiveness compared to medication of mindfulness to treat depression, anxiety, and pain, without side-effects, it also reduced the psychological stress.

Meta-analysis showed that MBCT was effective to lower the relapse of depression, and the more severe the depression the larger the benefits of MBCT.  The reason, is that patients were more able to decenter (step outside the thoughts, and see them coming and going instead of being carried away).  Also the more they practice the lower the risk of relapse.

There are still many open questions: what is the added value of mindfulness compared to cognitive therapy? what disorders does meditation relieve better than current standard psychiatric treatments? Should these methods be used along with those standard interventions? What specific kinds of meditation work best to relieve which mental problems -and what is the brain's circuitry involved? [NB: meditation teachers suggest to do meditation on top of standard psychologic/psychiatric treatment]

Loving-kindness practice has been used to treat PSTD, if it works if offers a cost-effective group treatment.  Moreover, PSTD symptoms include numbness, alienation, and a sense of "deadness" in relationships -all of which loving-kindness might help reverse by the cultivation of positive feelings toward others.  War veterans dislike the side effect of drugs used in the classical treatment, so they look for alternate treatments.

[NB: skip the dark nights section because is too complicated to explain and summarize]

A Yogi's Brain

Although we could try to compare meditation training of yogis with elite sportsmen, in meditation the better you get the less you care about your ranking - let alone social status, wealth, or fame.  That made difficult to convince true yogis to participate in the research.

The study of effects of meditation is about something intensely private, one person's inner experience -while the tools to data are machines that measure biological reality, not the inner experience.  Technically, the inner assessment requires a "first-person" report, while the measurements are a "third-person" report.

Francisco Varela proposed an idea to close the gap between the first and third person: using a "second-person", an expert on the topic studied, with a well-trained mind, that will provided better data that a not trained mind.

The Dalai Lama send Matthieu Ricard to Richard Davidson lab.  Matthieu was a French seasoned practitioner, that before becoming a Buddhist monk had a PhD on molecular biology with the Nobel laureate François Jacob.  His contribution was key to set the protocol, and to convince to participate other seasoned yogis, like Mingyur Rinpoche, whos first test was so much out of scale, that make them believe a malfunction of the fMRI.

Hidden Treasure

The experiences with Mingyur Rinpoche had other surprises.  Gamma oscillations usually happen for a few seconds when we have an aha! moment.  The measure of Mingyur Rinpoche during meditation provided unprecedented values, persisting for minutes.  The gamma oscillations persisted also in yogis during the deep sleep.  The massive levels of gamma activity in the yogis and the synchrony of the gamma oscillations across wide spread of the brain suggest the vastness and panoramic quality of awareness that they report.

Antoine Lutz wrote in one study that beginners after a week of training on yogis practices, they look similar in meditation to them.  But there is a remarkable difference between during resting between yogis and beginners.  Also, yogis have a remarkable talent at entering a specific meditative state within a second or two, which is also a proof of altered trait.

The reaction to pain is also different.  In a experiment where people were warned before having a painful experience, subjects anticipated the pain, and kept stuck to it after the sensation finished.  On the contrary, yogis, didn't anticipated, and quickly come back to rest state after the experience.  This let them be fully responsive to a challenge when it happens, without letting the emotional reactions interfere before or afterward, when they are not longer useful.  This seems an optimal pattern of emotional regulation.

In 1992, by request of the Dalai Lama, Richard Davidson made a lecture to the monks of Namgyal Monastery.  He include a demonstration of EEG measuring the brain activity during the practice.  When preparing the the sensors on the head of the monk, all the public started laughing.  Richard thought it was due to the funny look, but actually they laugh at measuring mind only on the head, without looking at the heart.  Fifteen years later, Richard's team collected data that made them realize compassion was very much an embodied state, with tight links between the brain and body, and especially between the brain and the heart, like the fact that yogis' heart beat faster compared to novices' when they heard sounds of people in distress.

There are a variety of compassion practices that can matter when measuring effects:

• Nonreferential compassion, a state in which love and compassion permeated the whole mind with no other discursive thoughts.
• Sustained, caring attention is being present to another person, enhances empathy.

The findings discovered so far, has to do more with the availability of data, than with a plan to cartography the vastness of human experience.  This situation is comparable to the parable of the blind men and the elephant.  Also we must know that these yogis are very rare, so in Asian cultures call them "living treasures".

Altering Traits

"In the beginning nothing comes, in the middle nothing stays, in the end nothing goes" Jetsun Milarepa, XII c.  Matthieu Ricard explains it: at the start of the contemplative practice, little or nothing seems to change in us. After continued practice, we notice some changes in our way of being, but they come and go.  Finally, as practice stabilizes, the changes are constant and enduring, with no fluctuation. They are altered traits.

Beginners find improvements in attention very early on, including less wandering after just eight minutes of practice.  Small improvements in molecular markers of cellular aging seem to emerge with just thirty hours of practice.  Still, all such effects are unlikely to persist without sustained practice.

Meditation over years (1000 to 10000 hours of practice) make deepen the mentioned effects, and emerge other benefits, like changes in the hormonals indicators and lessened stress reactivity, the brain connectivity for emotional regulation strengthen and cortisol lessens.

Loving-kindness and compassion practice over long term enhance neural resonance with another person's suffering, along with a concern and greater likelihood of actually helping. Attention, too, strengthens in many aspects with long-term practice: selective attention sharpens, the attentional blink diminishes, sustained attention becomes easier, and an alert readiness to respond increases. And long-term practitioners show enhanced ability to down-regulate the mind-wandering and self-obsessed thoughts of the default mode, as well as wakening connectivity within these circuits -signifying less self-preoccupation.  These improvements generally tend to become traits.

Not all changes occur same speed.  For instance, the benefits of compassion come sooner than does stress mastery. Shifts in very basic biological processes, such as a slower breath rate, occur only after several thousand hours of practice. Some seem more strongly enhanced by intensive practice on retreat than by daily practice.

Practice makes converting meditative states to traits.  Yogis not only experience gamma oscillations during meditation, but also at rest.  Also their response to physical pain during simple mindfulness practice have the inverted V shape.  Moreover, for them concentration becomes effortless, contrary to novices, that need effort to enter in meditative state.  Some Buddhist traditions call this level of stabilization as the recognition of the "basic goodness" [aka: buddha nature, innate well-being]. There is an ongoing long-term study that conjectures that meditation seems to transform the resting state-the brain's default mode-to resemble the meditative state.

There is a common belief that 10000 hours of practice allow us to master a skill.  Some skills need far less, like memory that only needs 200 hours.  Concerning meditation, the way of practice makes a difference: meditating one session a day is very different from a multiday or longer retreat.   For example, the slowing of breath is much more correlated with retreat that with daily practice.  In retreat, usually there are teachers to provide us guidance.

Which forms of practice are more helpful to which people?  One study found that for people with extreme worries and anxious thoughts had more relief with yoga that with MBSR.

The three levels of practice used - beginner, long-term, and yogi- are grouped around different types of meditation: mainly mindfulness for beginners, vipassana for long-term (with some studies with Zen practitioners), and Tibetan Dzogchen and Mahamudra for yogis.  Can we extrapolate insights from mindfulness and apply them to vipassana, and from vipassana to the Tibetan practices?

Richard Davidson, Cortland Dahl, and Antoine Lutz created this typology: 

• Attentional: these meditations focus on training aspects of attention, whether in concentration, as in watching the breath, a mindful observation of the experience, a mantra, or meta-awareness, as in open presence.
• Constructive: cultivating virous qualities, like loving-kindness.
• Deconstructive: as with the insight practice, these methods use self-observation to pierce the nature of the experience.  They include "nondual" approaches that shift into a mode where ordinary cognition no longer dominates.

Spiritual traditions direct us to actualize the very best of us in lasting traits.  For example in Mahayana Buddhism practitioners should cultivate generosity, ethical conduct, patience, perseverance, meditation, and wisdom.  These qualities seem to match the indicators of brain changes found in the research.  The view of the yogis that participated in the lab is that all we have Buddha nature, but fail to recognize it.  The practice consist on recognizing all these qualities that are already in us, and lead us to recognize the Buddha nature.  From this perspective, the remarkable neural and biological findings among the yogis are signs not so much of skill development but rather of this quality of recognition.

Experiments with babies showed that there is an innate preference for kindness.  These findings are consistent with the view of intrinsic virtues like an intrinsic basic goodness, and the training of loving-kindness and compassion consists in recognize and strengthen these qualities already present in us.  Is would be the same that actualizing our potential to speak.

Although in the contemplative traditions the goal has been always the altered traits, nowadays most of us would prefer an easy and brief practice, a pragmatic approach that borrows what works and leave behind the rest.  In the deep paths, meditation represents just one part of a range of means helping to increase self-awareness, gain insights into the subtilties of consciousness, and, ultimately, to achieve a lasting transformation of being.  These daunting goals require lifelong dedication.

A healthy mind

Richard Davidson and his team developed an app for people, like many, cannot attend regularly meditation sessions and have not developed yet a regular practice by their own.  Healthy Minds cab be tailored to practice on the cushion, or while doing something else.  The app works the four pillars of well-being created by Davidson, based on the neuroscience, cognitive science, modern psychology and spiritual tradition findings.

Helping children develop kindness seem an obvious, good idea -- but at present this valuable capacity is left to chance of our education system.  Developmental psychologists tell us that there are differing rates of maturation for attention, for empathy and kindness, for calmness, and for social connection.  One serious program to develop these capacities is the SEL (Social and Emotional Learning) co-created by Daniel Goleman.

What if by transforming our minds, we could improve not only our own health and well-being but also for those of our communities and the wider world?  The Dalai Lama encourages all to do three things: gain composure, adopt a moral  rudder of compassion, and act to better the world.  We can also contribute to the urgent needs by: reducing greed and selfishness, reflect and act to reduce eco-calamities, and promote more kindness, clarity, and calm.  We need more people of goodwill, who are more tolerant and patient, more kind and compassionate.  And these qualities are not just adopted but embodied.