The Meditative State

00:00:00 check us out on our website helixcenter.org Facebook Twitter let me tell you a little bit about upcoming event on Saturday March 26th it's the second of our programs on genius this is understanding genius women and it's organized by Poet visual artist and Helix Center executive committee member Anne-Marie Levine and Anne-Marie will be joined by Joyce Chaplin from Harvard Catherine Keat from Trinity

00:00:30 College Darren McMahon at Dartmouth and Susan Seymour from Pitzer College today's program is the meditative State and I will briefly introduce our participants Sarah Lazar assistant professor in Psychology at Harvard Medical School Peter malinowski hello senior lecturer in Psychology and cognitive neuroscience at Liverpool John Moore's University coach and Paley Ellison

00:01:00 co-founder of the New York Zen Center for contemplative care Morgan Stebbins supervising analyst jungian psychoanalytic Association in New York Tang professor of psychological Sciences Texas Tech University we'll start [Music] so we start first yeah I think it's my

00:01:32 pleasure will be here to share the research on the application related to the meditative mind what we call the meditative brain so also I'm honored to have the colleagues here the audience here so it means we have a similar interest hope our discussion can facilitate understanding about this topic or

00:02:04 may help your practice yeah for myself I'm I'm a neuroscientist and psychologist but I'm also a long-term meditator yeah 10 years ago I moved from China to U.S so I've been a professor in China since 1987. Samu here well Professor Eunice organ first moved to the Texas Tech University so this is my background so I can share

00:02:36 the idea related to the Neuroscience mechanism of mindfulness meditation or meditation or I can and also can share the practice experience by myself when I learned in China so I started practice when I was six yeah so it's a tradition so maybe I have a different view from yours now you can help me

00:03:12 so I have a question for the researchers but you only since you jumped in um in in my reading of the research I haven't been able to find a coherent definition of meditation perfect idea I will leave too that's a good question for someone else I'd say for the yeah no I think um many of us try to dodge that question

00:03:43 yeah because when we turn and we ask the contemplatives and they say well you know because there's the meditation that we all think of where we sit and we watch our breath or we focus on something but there's also meditative Traditions oops sorry uh the vote like scripture reading and you know there's there's a lot of different ways to meditate so I think it's it's one of those Simone vile is one of those exactly yeah and so it's it's um so personally that's why I just I pick one I pick mindfulness I pick mbsr

00:04:14 someone who's even say that's not even really meditation um you know and so I try to avoid that question so meaning you pick a definition or a form that's already uh established and then yeah investigate it okay yeah I I actually I also I agree with with Sarah um even trying to if we would try to Define meditation as like uh with a definition that covers the

00:04:44 whole field of meditation I think we would give a very wrong impression actually I think we would it would suggest that somehow all these different approaches and Sarah mentioned a few that one could somehow bring them together and find some fundamental similarities maybe and then from the research perspective maybe similarities in brain state or brain Dynamics or whatever and I don't think this is possible and I I completely agree with Sarah that the the practices

00:05:16 that somehow we cover very vaguely under the term meditation they are so they can be so different that it would be a futile to to think that one could all lump it together sure so I think a certain so that an overarching definition would would suggest otherwise I I really agree that's probably why I asked the question yes um but it brings to mind another question which is that some proponents of some traditions think the idea of research itself is against the

00:05:49 grain of what the tradition is for I mean David Lopez is right one of the big scholars in favor of that view I don't really have a comment because I like to read the research but to does that come into play at all yeah definitely I mean when I first started you know people told me you're not going to see anything it's all ephemeral you know whatever you're measuring is not relevant I still get that actually you know so you get changes in the brain what does it mean right so

00:06:21 um oops I'm really this is not going to stay here today um so uh and so I I guess I have a lot of different thoughts about it um you know because meditation is vast right and um it's not like I feel like oh we're gonna do one experiment and explain all of meditation and one or two experiments I mean it's going to be years I mean pain I think is a really good example people have been studying pain scientifically for 50 years right and I think pain is

00:06:53 just as ephemeral as the meditative State and you know there's still a lot they've learned a lot but there's still a lot they don't know and don't understand so I think um you know and I often look to the pain literature to sort of you know for parallels and whatnot I think it's a useful thing to look at um and so but I do think there I don't know that we'll be able to explain all of the meditative state with the Neuroscience but I do think we can explain bits and pieces of it and I think that has some contribution especially you know in the context of psychotherapy

00:07:25 and and medical using meditative techniques in medical settings and clinical settings because then I think you know we had a sense of now of what's going on in the mind or someone who's depressed or anxious or whatever and we have a sense of what's going on the mind of someone who's meditating and we can sort of see how there's maybe some overlap and how one might be able to help one another um so I think in a very limited sense we can get at some aspects of it but maybe not Enlightenment which is none of those things that no one wants to Define right so and I think this is part of my thing is you know if you can't Define it you

00:07:56 can't study it so right yeah so that that which we can Define we'll try to study and I guess if it's that broad then we have to Define little pieces and study that and put them together it's so amazing you know I spent the morning and a Meditation Retreat and uh and coming here I had to leave the retreat to come here which was felt kind of ironic in a certain way I have to stop meditating to go to talk about meditating and uh

00:08:27 but also I was talking with maybe 25 practitioners you know one-on-one during the morning and they are all practicing Zen meditation but I wouldn't describe any of them practice hanging really in the same way and how they're working with their mind in the same way so I'm super curious to learn about how you work with variants of each person because very different you know even like some people are working and there's three

00:08:58 different kinds of Zen meditation and then there's people individual people working in those medic those branches I'm just curious about in terms of study how do you study that hmm I'd love to learn yeah yeah so so we try to get people who are all doing the same thing that's why when I first did the first study I did everyone you know even just the possible meditation you know instead of just all meditation and now you know

00:09:29 with mbsr it's like people going through and so but it's hard to know even then I mean because even though they may be listening to the exact same tape what they're doing is different but the idea is that hopefully they're more or less doing the same thing um I don't know if yeah you have other ideas do you want to see first yeah um this would be the idea and the hope that if people are instructed in the same way follow the same approaches that that actually also they do the same and this then this is reflected for

00:10:01 instance in brain activity being similar sometimes it seems to be the case but we have also carried out studies of one particular study where we worked with Tibetan Buddhist meditators all from the same tradition all going through the same training all having the same meditation teacher and when we started them during different meditation states with with Magnetic encephalography basically

00:10:31 picking up the magnetic signal that the electrical activity produces the electrical brain activity produces what we found is what we didn't find is a consistent pattern of activity that was that was where we find any similarity yeah across these I think around 14 participants but then we also scanned their teacher yeah so and he basically if you had never

00:11:03 seen anything from Neuroscience no had no idea actually what you're looking at and you just show show someone the the visual representation of the of the brain waves here if you want then actually everyone who who has eyesight could see this one is different so whereas at maybe at an intermediate level there there is a lot of variation right yeah but maybe they're very Advanced States maybe converges more but

00:11:33 I think from my perspective it's too early to read answer this but it's a good question actually this question related to the research and also application number one like a sorrow and Paul said so when we want to study one form of meditation let's see mindfulness meditation or just meditation so you try to find the same teacher

00:12:03 same technique similar participants you want to control at all the factors right it's not easy I give example so when I was working in medical school as a professor so I work with patients so I develop a master called the integrated Body Mind training Body Mind training not just mine so we call ibmt so we use the same teacher for the college students

00:12:34 so over the 500 subjects just to see their similarity or there are the individual difference so we separate the question number one to see in general if people can benefit from this training number one question so you know undergrad students like American students if you ask them or you do the mindfulness meditation for 30 minutes per day they say okay fine I can do Monday to Friday no weekend

00:13:09 I'm so busy yeah okay so we do so then we find that even though the five session of IBM T so we find improved attention ability improve positive mood decrease negative mood but this all self-report right people argue what's the objective markers so we measure the cortisol celebrity cortisol to see all their stress hormone reduced then we we find that the immune

00:13:40 function Factor at siga improved so see see my work but you look at the 500 subject you find there are individual difference even though you deliver the same like this the environment right everybody's here same environment but that does our brain interpret or perceive or process in a different way or same way so there are lots of study just one important study so if this moment we measure everybody's

00:14:11 eye movement millisecond so this is the topic you will find from Asian people like Japanese Chinese over 90 percent eye movement they focus on the environment but the four westerners English speaker Canadian speaker over 90 time their eyes focus on the target Asian people American people they are in the same environment but they perceive

00:14:42 the information differently in a fundamental level but they all see the targets all see the environment right so then we study their brain to see how we how they respond the Brew response so then we find even though the five session 20 to 30 minute session their Brewing activity change like a burn wave like the both signal a farmer signal then there are even further they go to five hours so they change the Y meta structure you

00:15:14 know the structure also this structure change correlates with their emotional regulation ability you know when we want to rewire the brain that attract new heavy Behavior so you bring structure change but we do find many many individual difference then we measure the physiology if your heartbeat breathe personal change then we provide them to do the working memory task creativity task attention

00:15:45 task then you find most people go to the similar Direction but some people faster some people later some people in between so they call the individual difference right so I think there are lots of paper from Paul Sarah's group from my group so we have also have a review paper talking about the Neuroscience of mindfulness meditation the whole field now you'll find that even though many many Publications many many studies but the field is still very young because a

00:16:16 scientific research is just one perspective that address the part of a question however this meditation practice is more experiential right like when I move U.S from China so the people say oh your message is excellent give me manual that I will study menu that we've done yeah this is the mindset that I always joke them do you learn swimming using a menu in the water they said no I'm going to die

00:16:49 so we actually you can study user machine yeah use lots of scientific research method but you can also study from first person perspective from experience for this still mystery I think neither lots of people were not just from research do you ever control for other activities that give you the same effects excellent question so originally in the field many people did study just use one meditation group

00:17:21 before and after but recent years people find that there are several Publications yeah I think from some major Labs so they use mindfulness compared to another even though the health education course so they find similar no significant difference at least the four papers I know so then people started people start to use different control active control so our study always use

00:17:53 relaxation therapy you know relaxation training therapy is good for the anxiety stress so but we never told participants you are in the relaxational you are in a meditation we just we just said you you are in dietitian and relaxation so they believe the same so some people even love relaxation they say oh this is good for me some people love meditation but we did defined at least the least version of meditation

00:18:25 IBM key it's better compared to relaxation training so other people use other methods and did you compare it with things like jogging or listening to music or you know there's a lot of things that change our mentality yes I think there are study they're using the Yuga they use a physical activity yeah we had a study compare our long-term aging population for 10 years so one

00:18:58 group does a physical exercise another group for the IBM T meditation so we find that they actually folk they actually works on a different season like meditation more works on the central nervous system like a brain mind and the physical exercise the more works on the cardiovascular system but then they still work on the brain just the different odor of plasticity and we've done a study where we actually compared two different types of meditation actually so we compared mbsr

00:19:29 to Herbert Benson's relaxation response and so both are meditating it's both eight weeks clinical um and there's differences in the brains so I guess that also gets to your question a little bit um but also self-report you some self-report questions were very different um you know some things are the same they both reduce stress very effectively but the psychological mechanisms by which they worked were different the physiology was different and the brains were different so um and so we think that's really

00:20:00 interesting in terms of potentially eventually targeting different types of meditation to different conditions that's what I was going to ask conditions were people right right personality structures yeah right and there is a little bit of anecdotal evidence along those lines that some people um John Kevin's in years ago observed that people who tend to have a lot of you know worry in their head tend to do better with like yoga and sort of the semantic practices versus people who have more sort of body complaints do better with you know the meditation

00:20:33 um and then also in terms of um like anxiety versus um uh Panic you know that that people with panic tend to do a little bit better with mindfulness versus people with anxiety tend to do a little bit better with relaxation training and so again no hard evidence on that so don't quote me on that one but you know there's some little tiny bits of evidence to suggest that that might be you know that there might be I mean an extreme example as I would imagine that someone with a panic issue wouldn't be a good candidate for a

00:21:04 death meditation yeah probably not yeah but also someone's having a panic attack you don't say oh just calm down but you can't say okay even though you're panicking even though you're just be mindful what's going on right now be aware of it and so they really respond to it you know so that's the idea but again no evidence for that explicitly yeah right so when you say that what happens to the brain when you say be mindful what what happens

00:21:36 [Music] so there tends to be tends to be to be in the insula an area involved in intraceptive awareness and there tends to be turning off of the ruminative part of the brain and so it's a much more experiential experience you know which would you expect they've done a little bit with mindfulness and pain and that's really interesting so if you look at Placebo or distraction

00:22:07 or you know cognitive restructuring and pain they all look pretty much the same and all those forms of pain control what you get is a from the brain which is like the executive part of the brain turns on and the sensory part of the brain gets turned off so literally the front part of your brain is just telling the sensory part of the brain just don't feel it with mindfulness you actually see the opposite the front of the brain turns off and the sensory part goes up you think what what's going on there when you think about it that's what happens with

00:22:38 mindfulness right you're saying just feel it without elaboration and without judging it without trying to control it or stop it and that's exactly what we're seeing in the brains is that they're not trying to control it they're just sensing it but even though they have more sensory brain activity they and they're reporting that they feel it in the same they report less it doesn't bother them so much you know the affect of compartment so the sensory part of it is the same but the affect of like oh I don't like it it's unpleasantness that

00:23:08 is less in the meditators so it does seem like it's a it's a completely different way of doing pain control well that's interesting too that it sounds like I mean those are different um meditations different meditations seem to have a different effect on the brain and it makes me think that one of my questions is what use is the person making of the meditation because I think we've found that people can use meditation you know to let's say repress something or to

00:23:39 explore something mm-hmm so which gets us into a different level of right it's a discussion yeah then maybe the different people need different things at different times absolutely yeah I think it's useful I'd like to think of a lot like exercise you know and so um you know different types of exercise have very different benefits like weight-bearing exercise versus cardiovascular you know cardio um and they need different things at different times and depending on your condition and I think similarly with meditation

00:24:10 um like I know when I first started I needed fast yoga there's no way I could do meditation when I first started but now there's no way I could do fast yoga right and I really like the slow meditative yoga so I think you know when you said that you essentially calm down the cognitive parts but yet if I understood correctly if you tell somebody don't worry about it it doesn't change it but when you say don't worry about it you're addressing the cognitive part

00:24:42 I'm not trying to understand the question sorry in other words why why telling a patient or a person who's worried or anxious don't worry about it why doesn't that work um I think people may know that one phenomena called The White Bear phenomenon oh yeah so let's let's do a study that just a short one minute so

00:25:13 would you mind close your eyes everybody yeah close your eyes so just one moment then follow my instruction carefully to not think White Bear do not please open your eyes so what happened you're full of Weber right yeah because I'm trained mind

00:25:43 just behaves like this way you want to surprise something they will be back right so the life is full of opportunity Adventure challenge or you think it's bad part good part it's our label we label this good or bad because we prefer those things good we we don't prefer with it's bad we try to avoid right so in reality I think for the beginning in the beginning State like

00:26:14 I'm doing meditation today so beginner so I will try very hard to follow instruction right try to surprise control my thoughts emotion so then you find the the guardian so the sensory motor sensory or interception system increase also your self-control midline brain until single cortex they increase a little bit but in general let

00:26:44 those or lead for prefrontal control they goes down a little bit but you struggle you struggle so some study they find actually increase some study finder decrease because people use a different effort to get the same way like strategy right so then in the immediate part in the middle part you practice sometimes you can control sometimes you cannot so you are in the middle line so you gotta the midline PFC insular

00:27:16 then you enjoy experience meditative experience in some moment so you reward system deeper called straighten so star then yeah Advanced like we see Advanced meditator so even though they don't want to use a very strong control but they just be there so I propose two words one called doing another called being

00:27:47 so do you mean that you do very you work very hard try to get something done it's American culture right we want the fast food faster life yeah we work very hard try to get what we need so you look at the Asian culture they propose a being so sometimes being just being with you being with nature or environment it's still a strategy so the new world called trying

00:28:18 now to try try and knowledge I like you deal with the White Bear right you live with the emotion you live with these things you think is bad so I I give a talk about doing the beings so Odin said why you use being being so confused doing make sense so I joke with them do you know what we called the person that we call the human being we don't call human doing right

00:28:51 yeah just a joke so double you know oh we may miss the same part and this part related to the brain function brain structure physiology change in different level sort of a quick question for you um was that was that conclusion based on your research or did it come out of the tradition that you were practicing good question you mean the DUI and the bean right yeah yeah

00:29:22 um many years ago this idea was it from my practice when I work with people deliver the training retreat but recently years I'm not alone there are many many scholars they point out this being state so like the like a mindfulness meditation do we have definition called yeah so pay attention to the present without the judgment

00:29:54 right so it's easy description but it's hard to make it only you can stay with being State Acceptance openness that you can feel something but it's not really only related to meditation in your life you have experience in some moment you forget time forget the environment you just be there so give you ask your own question why you kiss your partner

00:30:24 in their moment you are kissing I do you mind working very hard no you forget you you are there being there right I think that depends but here's a question for the researchers how how do you deal with familiarity bias you know how do you deal with the difficulty of not wanting to confirm in your research that which you already want to believe yeah that's hard I mean you have to try to build in good you know you have to

00:30:56 build in skepticism right when you try to work with skepticism to Skeptics too because the thing though is also is that even because I see this with papers you know and uh they have to go through peer review so even if you know I'm a little bit biased when I goes out to reviewers they're gonna slam me I really try hard not to you know and to try putting the the posing Viewpoint and try to think of alternative explanations um yeah actually I won't get back to

00:31:27 your last question though there is I think um there's something called neurofeedback and what that is there's a really cool experiment that this guy at Yale did and he put people in a scanner who had never meditated before there's a part of the brain called the PCC and it's involved in just the little voice in your head and there's the Mind wandering and the talking and what he did is when that part of the brain was active they saw a lot of blue and that part of the brain is not active and quiet it turned red

00:31:57 and so they sure explained to them how to meditate and you put them in the scanner and then while they were meditating they got they were told just watch your breathing right and they got saw on the screen either blue or red depending on the activity of that brain region and this one guy you know he's watching his breath but he couldn't make it go blue it just going red meaning his mind is active and they told him you know you when you're you're doing it right you'll see this go Blue it's gonna turn off

00:32:28 um and the harder he tried the words of God so then finally he went oh and he doing versus being and he realized he was thinking about his breath and like watching it and controlling it so when he stepped back and just observed the breath boom and that's probably the brain turned off and he got it and got into a really deep state so I think because that was one of the questions you asked was you know can you get at it scientifically and so at least in that one case yes um and so now the guy is actually trying to do EEG neurofeedback and so you know

00:33:00 so with beginning meditators because lots of times that it's true when you first start meditating you know you're thinking about things and you're mind wandering and the whole thing so can you get that feedback from that one part of the brain and help you keep on track and help you be being instead of doing but I also wonder about the there's a kind of a bias in the meditation World about meditative mind peaceful and

00:33:31 the SE days we'll just meditate I think there's such a bias towards woo that's exciting yeah to peaceful and meditative and I just wonder in some ways even what we're talking about because if for example myself or when I'm working with my teacher or while I'm working with my students if I'm always

00:34:01 just like in our rainbows and unicorns and um as much as I like rainbows and unicorns it's not actually what I'm why I'm practicing right um and so I just wonder about the red and the blue because I think if I'm not going into the red sometimes and knowing how to work with that right so does that make sense yeah no definitely and so I think the idea is for the beginners because often people they get really frustrated because they never experience that really deep

00:34:33 Unicorn State right and and you need to be sort of in that deep when you're in that deep State that's when all of a sudden the stuff comes up and then you know how to work with it because you've done because you've had you've had the oh when the stepping back and just observing and the being and so I think you sort of need to learn that state first before you can dive into because otherwise you're just just therapy right so um otherwise you're just in therapy what's that otherwise you're just in therapy right you understand just you're ruminating and thinking yeah so yeah so

00:35:05 in the jungian tradition it's a there's a long history of meditative States and we try to track um the way the imagination is activated or not activated around certain images so it's uh just to address that question it's not a chattery sort of thing yeah no I know and I didn't mean to slam therapy I love everybody yes but it's sort of Defense though you know the thing that pays their bills so right

00:35:36 when I think I'm really good therapy you often get people into that same state though like I mean the whole you know distancing and sort of seeing your thoughts as just thoughts that whole thing so I think there is a lot of between meditation and therapy um but I guess that's the sort of the difference though between just sort of like thinking about your thoughts versus stepping back and observing your thoughts which again I think good therapy gets you into that place where where you are stepping back one works for different people yeah yeah and they work really well together that's my experience and just talking to other people they work really well

00:36:06 together one of the interesting pieces of research that I just read which is not on meditation is that apparently in general of course it's a generalization self-talk kind of mentality States work better for men and worse for women I'll have to find it but how did they Define works better um again I'll have to find it but it basically

00:36:37 um you know whatever you might Define as a good outcome meaning better feeling about yourself calmer uh less panicked um you know you come out with a self-report and um you know so on that's better okay roughly speaking the other one's not so good I I have some the question of what's better is a good one yeah yeah no I had some thoughts about this question with my feedback because actually when I'm when I'm giving talks about science of meditation

00:37:10 and so on this question comes a lot you know can maybe where's the idea maybe can I speed up the and the processes and so on and so so far actually my view was very hesitant in in this respect yeah first of all from my understanding of the insights we have so far regarding brain activity during meditation I would think I would not feel confident to say this is a the

00:37:40 signal this is how the brain activity should look like for the state we're aiming at yeah so if I don't know this what am I feeding back yeah so okay one can just try it and so on but if I if I don't know what I the state looks like I'm aiming at how should I give feedback red wrong State green or blue or whatever right State yeah so that's the one thing and but then more from the from the perspective of uh meditator and

00:38:12 and meditation teacher also what the beauty I think of of meditation practice is that it's one of these approaches that doesn't require anything else than my mind yeah so we are so used to giving away responsibility usually it's at least in the UK it's drugs yeah so we go to the pharmacy to to help ourselves to get a quick fix and a faster results we like that around here too yeah I'm sure you do so but now here there's a method

00:38:44 where I can say you only need your mind trust your mind you don't need any helmet you don't need any eegs you don't need any confirmation from outside with the technology or whatever you only need your mind to to practice right and I for me actually this is an incredibly powerful method or message also which gives a and that which gives a lot of trust and confidence and maybe you can also say responsibility to to the person

00:39:17 practicing or wanting wanting to practice and that's that's from from the perspective of a meditator that's the most interesting for me let's say actually all the all the strengths all the qualities all the insights everything is in you not in the machine you put on your head well not from I'm not a meditator no nothing about meditation so you wake up in the morning you meditate then you go to work and you're bombarded

00:39:48 with every possible conflict what's the difference between you who has meditated and me who hasn't but hopefully a lot so feeling of self-justification yeah so the idea is um you know because you practice meditation and the idea of practicing it is so then when you go out into the world you can then use it so the idea

00:40:18 would be that you um one person described meditation to me as becoming very intimate with the weather of your mind right because you really you're much more sensitive to the little thoughts and feelings that sort of flip by in the back of your brain and so you're more in tune with them so then when all that stuff happens throughout your day you see them and you're less reactive to it and so you're it's all the acting versus reacting I mean he should probably answer this question right so the Neuroscience can't

00:40:49 answer this but for the you know the teachers they can tell you you're just you're more calm you're more centered you're less reactive and um you know you're just going to interact do with it in a very different way that's if you define meditation as a separate activity right well ideally yeah idea the idea is that you can carry the mindfulness in particular you really can carry that throughout the day and that you really do see your thoughts as Just Thoughts throughout the day and then you know that and really with time it becomes

00:41:22 you know 24 7 which is idealistic but it does bits of it does carry through the day one of the questions I have is the relationship between the you know a goal state which is a cognitive an idea and whatever the processes that you find I mean Jung had this fascination with what he called natural symbols versus tradition symbols that came from a tradition and meaning I wonder if there's anything that we could call meditation that isn't

00:41:52 bound to a particular tradition and therefore wouldn't have the goal posts be already preset at least rhetorically [Laughter] no but I I don't know I don't know and actually I'm getting more and more confused as we talk in general like what are we actually talking about

00:42:23 um it's called mindfulness I believe I've been meditating too much you know today but you know but I think that but I'm what I'm wondering about is actually even are we talking about there are different schools of meditation right and then there are subsets of all the schools of meditation and then there are million traditions of meditation and I'm actually curious too about what I notice really different differently about

00:42:54 people I work with and in myself and in my own path and my teacher's path is really this sense of you know the in Buddhism are the three jewels as they're called the awakened mind the teachings and community so and I often get concerned and I notice a big difference when people are practicing with those three and when they're not hmm and usually most

00:43:26 meditators I find are really into the first two my own awakened mind and I'm going to study and learn it's like so transactional in a certain level but what about community and so to me I'm so curious if there's because I know that in my own Journey as a practitioner has that's like the most challenging and rewarding part of it Community or Sangha and

00:43:59 and most people are like yeah no thanks you know and because it's usually around our family of origin stuff but it's you know how do we I'm just curious in terms of is that part of the research or is it really just out of like a skill based you know learning a technique or are you really looking at are people landing and a tradition that actually supports them

00:44:29 in terms of their own awake you know awakeness in terms of learning ongoing learning at least for a lifetime and then you know Community are they being supported by others and supporting others so to me it's also the service piece which is the natural for me has been the natural response to you know a couple decades of meditative practice because it's the

00:45:00 only thing that makes sense and a certain point is being more loving as much as we can you know although that that doesn't you know need a community for that you can choose whatever place that you're in and the people around you I mean as an analyst that also has connections to lots of Dharma groups I often find refugees from communities because communities have inherent goal posts and power structures and I find as much crossover the other way you know I think perhaps there's an ideal of community

00:45:32 but I think these days it's a little more of a polyglot at least I know it is for me yeah again I think that is also interesting because how meditation is happening here in the west is very very different than how it's happening in the east in the East you go you have your teacher you have a really close relationship with your teacher and you live there you know in the in the community whereas here it's like oh yeah I go once a week and send my teacher once a week versus you know and I'm doing my striving in my job and everything else like that so it is I

00:46:04 think and also lost times in some traditions like you go you meditate in silence and you leave and you may not even know who the people are around you um so it's it's it's not necessarily even really community in the same even the meditation centers flooded on the science um and I think the science varies tremendously so again my science is focused a lot on the clinical applications so we don't really look at that so much but there are definitely scientists who are very very interested in that question and who are actively studying that um so it varies and I do think it is a

00:46:36 really important key piece I don't think the issue of community certainly is I think a lot of healing can come about by finding your community regardless of how you put that and that could have an effect that looks like meditation yeah just from being embedded in a community where you do have a co-concern a question you seem to be saying that it's an inevitable out you see you seem to be saying that it's an inevitable outcome of the deepening of your meditation that it's you were

00:47:06 saying that it's a natural process is that word so you weren't you weren't suggesting that it I'm always cautious about saying what's what's natural because I feel like everything's natural I haven't found something yet that's not natural I agree with that but I I actually think it's the most terrifying for most people is to really you know be a part of something

00:47:37 and you know um but I can just say from my own experience really working through it and staying with the discomfort which I've learned through my meditative practice and applying that to relationships over time but it takes you know both the community and yourself or your teacher and yourself to have that equal commitment to staying with it and exploring

00:48:12 and to me it's very powerful and it's been so moving to do that and has completely changed me I don't know if that answers your question about natural I had the sense that I mean that that there might have been an uh a point on one side that um the community orientation is an inevitable process but you weren't saying that because you were suggesting that that there's a a cultural social

00:48:42 context in which that well orientation arises well it is I mean I think if there's a meditation Community like there often is in mostly other places but right you know that's a very different kind of context than we have here typically right because I think we amount of emphasis placed on community versus in the East there's much more emphasis placed on it but I think another question you're getting at though is that so in Buddhism the idea

00:49:13 is that you know Enlightenment right or the highest is a combination of wisdom and compassion and so compassion is a huge and that is a natural outcome I don't know if you want to use that phrase or not but it is definitely one of the primary outcomes of meditation practice is really really really deep compassion for yourself and for others so but do you think but actually this is something I'm always wondering about do you think that I think some people feel like that that's an arrival that's a destination Point wow and for me it's

00:49:43 like a moment by moment because like in one moment I'm like how cool and then I'm like a complete to me it's like practicing like that you know yeah it's also a coercive goal post all right I mean it's very different than seeing what arises right well you're right there's a non-striving striving you know it's the but even though there's this aspiration versus goal right because I think again in the tradition the idea is that if you are striving for it you're never going to get there right and so when you just but

00:50:16 you if you but you said as an intention but a very a loosely held intention is the way it's described but why that intention foreign I don't know I will I will say um from my experience both on your research and application part so I started a practice when I was young so no goal just a tradition you practiced so beginning the tradition doesn't have

00:50:47 a goal the pass is the goal the past is the goal because in Western mind we think we need to have a goal goal setting we make a plan we follow the plan we will get it sometimes you can get there sometimes you're not like I have a strong intention motivation want to marry a movie star I make a plan can you make it probably or probably not very likely not

00:51:19 right so I think in my experience I practiced so I got some insight just within my mind I know oh I'm going to medical school yeah I'm going to work with patient I practice my own I learn from a teacher I enjoy so when I work with many patients I realize oh I want to involve more Psychotherapy psychology because the behavior or work with people you talk

00:51:50 about Community yeah so then I develop a method working with different people so that I realized oh we missed another part of Neuroscience so we try to explain in a scientific way so I work on their part so I never pushed myself so you have a goal to go to community this is your goal so actually we we have a in ches intrinsic motivation it happens just when you can hear what you can find when

00:52:21 you're aware so this is why 10 years ago I quit my university job in Chinese University as I moved to us I feel something some here so my colleague said this is a crazy idea yeah you are well established here why move there it's new country you need to speak English not German so lots of challenge but I feel something I want to do so I just do it

00:52:52 right also I owe I can just stay with in China I focus on my research fine so I will think we have a different understanding about the goal we have a different understanding about how to achieve a goal it's related question yourself self-awareness or what you call Enlightenment whatever you're called so some people who have been working in a meditation many many years they feel some

00:53:22 something they are higher compared to other people right they feel different but actually the same many people never meditate so they still have a good experience in life understanding life like I was a long-distance Runner when I was young I learned a lot during running I feel the state similar as a meditation I feel that so you're reading the book you're watching the movie you chat with a friend so you just the daydreaming you are in the state

00:53:53 it's not a mystery so I would think a meditation just is attitude it's a skill it's a decision whatever you want to do you say I don't want to message I want a physical exercise fine so even though for my teacher I think we should keep a balance away about a meditation so we open it's a journey that's why I call it the past is the goal but rather than I have a fixed goal

00:54:23 rigid goal I need to do something because we have a lot of software just because we only have a one option we said I only can do this way achieve the way that I can be happy I can be succeed actually it's not so you use the term called a moment right yeah moment to moment you have momentum mindful moment meditation moment happy this is a life so you you enjoy so I think we were born and to be here to enjoy the life rather than the

00:54:55 suffer yeah we can Obama said yes we can we can't suffer we live or suffer we label this suffer right the young things are suffering and are non-suffering together make us whole so there's a different View so are there any studies with monks who pray all day

00:55:26 oh yeah I don't mean Buddhist monks I'm in Catholic monks I think there's been a few I think so a few study yeah not as many yeah not as many and is that different than meditating and mindfulness yeah um there's uh there are two studies two studies related to the prayer um it depends on the different type of prayers you know some prayer just a prayer for something like the Mantra

00:55:57 yeah some just like compassion compassion based prayer yeah so thinking about the the goodness or wealth others a different practice so they find some overlap in the middle line of the brain midline so anterior to posterior midline because this this midline brain related to yourself perception cell processing yeah also

00:56:27 there are study related to the how the hypnosis is similar different from meditation yeah it's an interesting study um we also have a similar result yeah so we compare the hypnosis and the ibmt meditation so then we use a SUV task you know so you you name the like the red the red but I can read in red color the word or in green color

00:56:57 so you set a red red color is faster so red in green color is slower you get conflict right psychologists always make trick so people try very hard yeah so then many many people find after before after hypnosis so you'll find the brain change because hypognosis can block your visual input you know have no hypnosis said yeah you

00:57:28 never you see nothing meaningless so your visual system processing back in the region in the back region so the blocked so that's why information could not transfer to the frontal lobe cannot process the conflict this is the hypnosis study so if you use IBM team meditation you'll find visual input still there then the region bring region that response for resolving the conflict they work harder to resolve the conflict then Behavior

00:58:01 level everybody perform the same so Brew level is quite different so I I like sports analogies so [Music] um running swimming golf weight training there's perhaps some common benefit but they're also very very different right you can gain very very different skills and use different muscles depending on which of those you do and my sense is that the same is truth meditation that there's going to be some things that are common but then each is going to have

00:58:32 also things that are unique and so I'm guessing with the you know he was saying with the with the prayer that there's going to be certain similarities it'll be very similar to the the Buddhist Meditation but other things will be very different um doesn't make a difference I don't know I mean it's more you know I don't know I think it's important I think sometimes the way the researchers portray a lot of the meditation research there's a little bit of um holier than thoundness with it you know like oh and we meditate and we're better

00:59:04 than you and I'd really try to avoid that um because I think you know because I think it backfires right there is this huge anti-meditation movement right now like this anti yeah there's a lot of backlash of um and I often get this question what about prayer what about other you know what about she what about other even other forms of of meditation um because there is sometimes a sense of oh you know mindfulness changes the brain and it's only mindfulness and it's you know better than everything else and I really try to convey to people that

00:59:34 that's not the case like this is what we're studying so this is what we know about but it's not better it's not I mean it's just different but it's not necessarily better than other types of prayer or other you know mind-body therapies like Tai Chi or yoga and that each is going to have certain benefits and they're going to have things that are common things that are unique you know but I think at the end of the day they all have similarities of you know spiritual transformation and

01:00:04 you know feeling whole feeling one these sorts of things and so I think that's yeah that's what's beneficial um and so I think you know and so for me it's not trying to say oh meditation changes the brain it's oh how does meditation change the brain so we can understand how meditation works so I think that's a slightly different uh goal in the research it says not trying to say oh yeah we're better because we change the brain it's what can we learn from this I wonder what would happen if you called

01:00:35 it something different what do you mean well I mean as an analysis well exactly right trepidation trepidation yes right I mean you know the question for me often is what's the fantasy about what this is going to bring you right right what's the interest in that particular form or the thing you've heard about it right that's that's the levels a lot of people relate to it on right so yeah what if you said we're going to practice trepidation I love that well that's an interesting question you know and because there's this whole

01:01:06 idea of intention matters it actually does a huge thing right now even so even just within you know mindfulness like you know if you go and you meditate for the purpose of reducing stress versus if you meditate with the aspiration of entertaining Enlightenment is the same thing going to happen in your brain even though you may be focusing on your breath is it different probably yes and as an analyst we have to put all of that into question because you have to wonder what's the role of the unconscious oh yeah I mean right I mean the new neurological studies show that most decisions are made below the level of Consciousness so I'm

01:01:39 not sure intention matters attention or intention intention yes it does but again it's so big and this is why meditation takes you know 30 years to more to attain Enlightenment usually right and you know during an entire lifetime but I mean it's some I don't know so I just what I'm drawn to is the mythology around Buddhism and who knows we know that something interesting happened 2600

01:02:10 years ago we don't maybe it was a person but you know the mythology story that I like so much is that he was you know there was this guy maybe it was a guy maybe it was a woman probably was a woman you know and you know and there was a person there who was very secluded right and trapped in their own little story that somebody else gave them like most of us and then he goes outside of that story and encounters a sick body

01:02:43 a very frail elderly body and a dead body and to me that inspiration of like oh this is what's gonna happen this is what's inevitable and then what and so to me the motivation is I always very deeply resonated with that so how if your actions are your only belongings how are you going to function and if we

01:03:14 don't really face our vulnerability and Frailty whatever what are we gonna do so and it's easy to say but hard to do yeah related to the intervention very quiet okay related to intention and the motivation I think um we have a certainly have a Consciousness yeah we are weak right now we also certainly have unconscious processing

01:03:45 it's for sure in meditation world even though you change the name because the name certainly has a meaning because name is kind of suggestion right I have a Chinese name called the EU I mean the one source it's Chinese name but people give me another English name call me Mike right but I have too many close colleaguers they all call Mike so we get confused so you call me you and call me Mike I'm the same person it doesn't matter with

01:04:17 the label right but regarding the intention yeah intention I give I provide a study a private study to share with you yeah so you know the smoking quitting is very hard over a 90 smoker try very hard every year to quit smoking but they failed they have a strong intention because therapists said if unless you have a strong intention then you can succeed why this smoker has a strong intention over 90 percent fail

01:04:49 certain there are some underlying reason related to the unconscious change the Habit lots of things so we have a study very simple study so we recruit the subject from campus campus smoker we never told them we are going to help you quit smoking no so we ask them are you interested in improve attention you say yes I will improve interest in stress reduction yes

01:05:19 so they come here so we deliver them attention compared to relaxation training so before study We compare a smoker non-smoker their brain then we find that smoker has a deficit in the self-control Center in the brain here it makes sense a lot of studies show Behavior level they have a 20 cigarette per day 36 gram per day all this stuff so we deliver the training nobody really know the goal this attention right the

01:05:51 stress reduction no quit smoking so after 10 session 30-minute procession 10 session within two weeks we scan the brain again then we find their Center self-control Center the deficit change the improved activity more control then we look at their behavior if they quit smoking so before after we have a self-report study report screen everything every day how you smoke one

01:06:22 so most of smokers said before 20 cigarettes after 20 cigarette 20 so we are confused because we have a machine the machine can matter their air in their lawn when they smoke how they smoke how many smoke so it's objective so objectives show not 20 secret only 10 secret but the white smoker always report 20. it's a habitual response so we show them this is the data from

01:06:52 machine can you check your pocket right now so they check they said oh my God usually I should nothing because 20 but right now I got a 10 left it means I only smoke 10 cigarette per day so the smoker were not aware the behavior change so there are study indicating smoker helps has self-awareness deficit that's why this is the habitual response

01:07:23 everyday response so we also find over 60 percent smoking reduction 30 percent of smoker creating without the intention to quit a small purposely so this study so in conclusion do we have ongoing study it means when you want to change a habit we always think of the Habit bad I want to kill this habit so you actually put a

01:07:54 lot of attention you emphasize but right now we don't talk about a bad habit we create a new pathway yeah you build a new habit you build something that have a strong strong then the old habit disappear it's like a river go that way I never stop the river but I get another pass so stronger so it seems an unconscious mind and conscious change make a lot of things

01:08:25 but we are not aware this idea but I have a data yeah [Music] there's a lot of talk of mindfulness over the last two years I hear it constantly and people who seem to practice it I don't know exactly what it is ah okay but

01:08:55 people talk to me about it and they all seem to feel very positive about it and they feel it changes their way of looking at their life at the world and so on so is this something we should be teaching children at kindergarten level in order that they have a different view of the world as they grow up and do you know what hovering attention is oh they can't do it but he said he did it when he was six no no yeah no

01:09:26 definitely kids can do it hovering attention right that's it hovering attention yes that's mindfulness right so that's I mean that's something that I'm told therapists know about right because this idea is that you when you're in a therapy session right that you're aware of what the person's saying but you're also aware of your own reaction to what they're saying and you're sort of used The Meta awareness right the awareness of your awareness awareness of what's going on that's the mindfulness but my patients who are analysis they don't live after 50

01:09:57 minutes and think boy this was so fantastic it changed my view of the world and the the sky is Bluer in fact sometimes the opposite is the case that's okay right well because that's what what he was trying to say is that with meditation it's not always but again this is where the intention comes in because during the therapy session you're focused on the other person you're not necessarily focused on you know that what you would focus on with you or meditating and it is because it's also the non-judging so there's the

01:10:28 the awareness but there's the hovering attention but there's also the non-judging and working with what comes up in a very specific way so that's that's true that's so the mindfulness is both those together is this how would you relate Ellen Langer's view of mindfulness very different right so the mindfulness word is a tricky one because I love her view and her work it's totally different right and even so there's John capitzin's definition which is paying attention in the present moment in a specific way not judgmentally because even there's a ton it's a lot of words yeah there's it is but there's even

01:11:01 that's controversial not even everyone agrees with that definition but that's one that most you know is probably closest kind of sort of to what people are talking about um but it's present moment and awareness of except and love it's like the sensory experience too um as opposed to but but it's also based on a you know early text yeah it all comes from a very early text which is you know mindfulness is an aspect of the meditative path and you know it's also in the Sati

01:11:34 patana where that it comes from is like a deep exploration of your decaying body too so I hope there's other things yeah no but like it's a pretty substantive part of it and I just I like to advocate for that when we talk about mindfulness is like to think about you know that you're gonna die and actually it really encourages you for actually so when I think it gives a little fire to the whole idea of mindfulness because

01:12:04 I know many people come to our Center I'm like I'm ready to get my zen on a little mindfulness on and you know and I'm like okay well you know let's look at this you know and so I think in some ways the reality of our own death is also part of what makes you you could say things become very Vivid or what you were talking about or you know my Zumi roshi who's the founder of our lineage is

01:12:36 you know why he talked about the only thing that makes sense is to truly appreciate your life because to be mindful is actually to realize we have just a short time and so in the realize we have a short time it's like oh right all right let's sit up here you know and pay attention so I think also mindfulness has to happen telling somebody be aware of your mortality constantly not a bad way to go yeah but it's not that easy to be aware of

01:13:07 one's mortality all the time but other things are constantly happening you'll have to sit in a room and just keep saying I'm mortal I'm mortal no how do you no um that's what they call it a practice how do you achieve a state where you are without really giving it a lot of effort that you are aware of your mortality constantly when our general intention in life is to live everything is about living the cells of

01:13:39 our bodies or living we are living we are looking to the future we are looking to the evening whatever we are looking forward to it's all about living not about the future though it's out there right now that's the difference like right now like what if I told you I knew be honest the video is going to crash down in 15 seconds and wipe us all out right what would you do these last 15 seconds right [Laughter] so that's I think the idea of the meditation in seconds is not enough time

01:14:09 to do anything but well and also isn't the present moment basically a mythology [Laughter] [Music] who's claiming truths around you yeah not me I will say I give example I appreciate your your views give example let's test so if everybody here is going to change our views yes if everybody's here I

01:14:40 appreciate them that much can she can leave a hundred years here right now we can live 100 years let's see maybe not right let's suppose we can live 100 years from now so 100 years I mean three six five zero zero days right more or lesson so now you calculate how old are you right now so you say oh I only have a 10 000 days

01:15:11 so you calculate same truth but you calculate differently now you realize or life is short life the sword you need to give yourself some time [Music] at least the moment that you think why how what I should do in a short life we always suppose it's a long time I'm going to die we never think but you calculate the days no more left this is why we need to do important

01:15:42 thing in your life right you do important thing in your life actually you take responsibility for yourself you help your family you help Society right American colleagues land with freedom everybody wants freedom in undergrad dorm everybody in the midnight at 2 am they still know this it's my freedom it's my right they never consider others so this country needs a responsibility right you you think yourself take your

01:16:13 own responsibility then with other meditation you can still do good things I think this important doesn't matter you call it mindful meditation yoga whatever you call but the essence the spirit Remains the Same the reality is still there life is short to important and good indeed I think this is important you know a lot of this discussion underscores

01:16:46 reflective capacities and I'm curious as to whether there's any research that looks at what the uh meditative capacities or the uh the abilities of people let's say what is this ever taught to people with uh mental retardation are there certain cognitive and or other capacities of the mind that are required in order to

01:17:16 practice these kinds of skills and the same you know because Ed's question was was getting at children right right you know what cognitive and emotional capacities have come online that can make something like this possible or is it or is it not no definitely and there's several initiatives right now to bring it into schools and so definitely it's being taught to kids back in the day of the Buddha they were supposedly seven-year-olds you know enlightened beings running around and they were you know um and there's also some stories of

01:17:48 you know of very mentally challenged people learning meditation and they could have them sweep and just be mindful of sweeping how do you understand those stories well they're stories right so but well yeah I mean so you have to take them with a grain of salt obviously but I think the idea being that you don't have to be you know a genius to do it that is because I'm curious what you meant by the present moment as a myth but because that's the idea with Buddhism right is that the all you have is the present moment

01:18:19 everything else is a myth the only thing that really truly exists is the present moment and so it seems like a lot of rhetoric seems like a lot of rhetoric well how is the so how's the present moment a myth that's I'm curious about that one um I've never seen anyone operate without a reference to a sense of self which is a historical thing or to at least short-term past and future to people they know which is embedded in memory uh so even because they're operating so how does that make this present moment a

01:18:49 myth because there's no such thing that we could talk about as a present moment except as a device within a traditional structure to get someone to do something I don't think I fell of that I don't even understood this but I I'm in the way of course of defining the present moment is that at the moment between the past and the future yeah so so in this sense it's it's also nothing that can be found independent

01:19:20 independently so I don't know if this is what what you're I mean I find that there are people that need to if for their own good not according to my um you know evaluation think more about the future yeah and but but I my understanding is that the emphasis of on the present moment being here and now and and all kinds of metaphors in a way it is it is to make people aware of how much of their time they spent ruminating engaging with the the past

01:19:53 engaging what is happening with the what might happen in the future rather than experiencing themselves in the situation you know and and for this and I'm in this kind of metaphor of a present moment is used so be here right and no but but then if you look deeper than where's this present moment I I see it more like the pendulum in often in in our experience is so far either in the past or in the future

01:20:24 so that actually the also the relationship that that happens or can happen in a certain situation doesn't happen because our our mind is somewhere spinning in other in other Realms and for this then you say okay bring the pendulum a bit more towards what is happening right now yeah sure but then if you say right now I know you can't find it right now right and I think experientially or in a relationship you can find that and you can experience it I just think that the way that it's used is very different in

01:20:54 the rhetoric of the religions we're talking about well but actually I think it's sort of interesting like you said this if the moment present moment is a myth because you're always thinking about the past and the future so you don't think it's to express your true self to be in the present moment too this isn't not to express your true self right which is not your history or your future why not well that's the queen right that's what

01:21:26 they're saying that if you get into that moment that is not future herself then that faster future that is something different and that's the thing now we're talking about what other people say though well no well okay I think I've had very brief moments of it you know and it is it's different you know just like a pure awareness I think the the present moment just present moment doesn't need to last have discussion argument because from the theory you

01:21:56 will never understand a moment it's a moment yeah you see that on a chair that you feel your body touch there it's a moment but at least many times we we're not aware so but just you cannot meditate for 10 minutes five minutes but you can meditate momently that's it right and in their moment let's see you forget a past put aside the future there are moments so what's your mind what's

01:22:27 your body what's your emotion no thinking just I'm there I'm here so you feel more space more relaxed right but if you're thinking now thinking moment you're still not in the moment I think it's based on experiential experience feeling this definition beyond the concept so I think in Western World when I move here I realize yeah the Western world

01:22:58 love language love concept then action but the Eastern World they experience first then they conceptualize later I think that we can learn from each other so maybe it's better we label is better yeah okay I think we can go through questions from the floor people could line up and please state your name and please make

01:23:28 your comments brief in the form question part good answers hi my name is Nomi I work in a library and I see what people choose to read and there is definitely a narrative specificity to all the great Traditions that we are discussing here uh being mindful can also happen to a soldier to somebody who is out there killing for the group that he or she belongs with so there is a suggestion

01:23:59 that you know can mindful really evolve Consciousness from egocentric to ethnocentric to world-centric to cosmocentric if people remain stuck with the group they were brazed in or the narrative that they consider are more sacred or they have been have they have they made a difference for the last so many centuries that all these great narratives have existed have they created evolved human beings who are more World conscious more sentient you know are there non-meat eaters among Jews and Christians and Muslims because

01:24:30 that's not part of their narrative but it is part of Hindu and Buddhist narratives thank you so a question for Peter oh I'm sorry I'm not sure the question was the response I got a lost about a long description so what's the actual question could you reframe these great narratives have existed for a very long time has it evolved Humanity we're spreading more than 2 trillion on weapons to kill fellow human beings from

01:25:01 all these great Traditions has it evolved Humanity because there is definitely religion is a very powerful force and meditation is an integral part of all great religions but is it making a difference to an individual in terms of becoming more World conscious becoming more sentient in terms of the way we live everyday life well enough one yes [Laughter] so again this gets a little bit into

01:25:32 different Traditions but at least in some of the Traditions the idea that one aspect of mindfulness is compassion so they would say that a sniper cannot be mindful they can be aware of the present moment but they're not actually being mindful because they're having the intention to kill rather than intention to help so but that's that's a limited definition yeah right or in some situations I would I would really hope there is a sniper absolutely yeah so and it can be the most compassionate action to act as

01:26:03 a sniper it's not I I think it's not the standard situation so but if we go to the extreme to condemn people who decide to put their life on the line to protect others I I'm not so comfortable with this idea to be honest so in in probably 99 of situations or 90 99.9 or so but I agree yeah but there are other situations forget that comes into intention though so I guess if it's a compassion for the person you're protecting versus the hatred of the person yes but uh yeah but you can be a

01:26:36 very compassionate sniper at least in theory I think I don't know because I don't know how it is practiced because I'm not in the Army Stephen Stephen Pinker if we you know I don't know where the evidence is exactly Stephen Pinker thinks that there's less killing per capita now than there has been in all of human history so you know so that's a possible answer I don't think I have an answer you have an answer you have a I'm deeply concerned about the world I feel like the world the natural as we

01:27:06 know it world is in deep trouble and I think that there's not a lot of meditative mind in if you open the paper in politics there is so much polarization there's so much you know focus on what you know a transactional approaches to things what am I going to get and I'm deeply concerned about those things I don't have the answer

01:27:37 but I'm concerned about it I can't say that again a question for Peter about the teacher whose brain Imaging was clear to everyone that there was a differential between a resting state and his his Imaging and also of course the students uh what was the nature of that of the activity image for example was it more of a pan cortical activity well

01:28:08 they're more synchrony between different brain areas that was persistent over time what was it no it's actually it was across the whole range of parameters if you want including increase oscillary activities in the almost in the whole frequency range that we usually look at from that very low frequencies up to well in this case we looked up to 128 Hertz so across the whole Spectrum and also

01:28:39 um I think it was a few years ago um yeah and this actually also when uh evident in different meditative conditions was there any um and I forget the name of the brain structure right now forgive me but there's something unique in the human prefrontal cortex it's bilateral that is uh there's a recent paper about this about six months ago that is dedicated to projecting multiple potential futures

01:29:10 and enabling simultaneous evaluation probabilistically of which is best to engage best to follow and if I could remember that it would be easier but remember the name of it but I would be I would submit possibly that that was uh actually lower activation because that person would not be so engaged in planning either on a very basic level or

01:29:41 on a very conscious level and not just a speculation so it's a little more complex than that okay because what happens is so yes some area may get turned off during meditation but what's really clear is that the wiring is actually changing and so and how that area may be wired to other areas is changing and so because it is the case that you know when you're not in meditation you know you may need to be thinking about your future and you may need to be planning you know and seeing your three different possible futures or whatnot but when you

01:30:13 do that activity your brain's being wired a different way and so you're gonna think about those three options a different way okay thanks and just a comment that if anyone wants to respond but I I I was thinking that the problem with the uh the the now doesn't exist and the now is the only thing that exists is that they're in different context the former is really from physics right because uh time is continually flowing in a unit well there are some exceptions on the quantum level time reversal but aside from that that

01:30:43 it is the case that it's flowing from future to present and that moment is just a transitory uh entity if you will uh passage not a thing in and of itself but from the awareness of the process of being a temporarily aware individual there's only the present moment um that's how I see it thank you um related to the question of biases that came up briefly uh there's a major

01:31:14 problem in many areas in Psychology these days about reproducibility of results um journals only want to publish positive results there's really no incentive for uh people to reproduce other experiments I'm just wondering how this area of research is dealing with these problems that paper was debunked no it wasn't default with that no there's a paper that just came out I know and they reproduced they couldn't reproduce their findings and they found all sorts of problems with

01:31:44 this it wasn't as bad as they did but it's still a major problem no it's not as bad as I thought though so yeah that is bad but it's a problem because the original I'm sorry because original paper said that only 30 of the science could be reproduced but in truth it's closer to 80 or 90 that could be reproduced yeah that's what they found when they actually went in and that's the thing is they said that the people who did the original study used really poor methods both in how they reproduce the study and in tried to reproduce studies and in the math that they used so for instance one of the studies they did um the original study was done in the

01:32:17 U.S with I forget what age and then the reproduction study was done in Europe with like a completely different population and so they didn't reproduce it but I was like okay well you didn't reproduce the conditions they were even close to reproducing the conditions so what are you doing in your area to reproduce it accurately right so we are doing reproduce so good science usually what you do is you do a study and then the next study you reproduce it but you add something extra to it so that's what we're doing so our first study was we showed there were changes pre-post eight weeks of practice right but that's all

01:32:49 we did was show changing the brain structure so now we're doing a study you know um where we're doing that but then we're also adding additional measures so that we will be able to hopefully reproduce what we did but then we'll also be able to add on to it I think a lot of scientists do do that where there is replication inherent in the study because in order to build on it I have to reproduce it to then do the next steps with it yeah you need other people to reproduce your results and you reduce other people's reasons yes definitely I mean definitely I mean I think I've you know just done some stuff that he's

01:33:21 done and there's definitely so that's the thing I think that is a very Sensational paper that original one and it's got a lot of attention but in fact I don't think this situation is anywhere near as bad as people are trying to make it out to be there is a ton of reproducibility in science and there's a ton of me too science so a lot of this stuff really does get reproduced but I would still think that I mean now if we applied this this question of how much is reproduced with let's say within meditation research I think most of the results we have they

01:33:52 are still on on quite shaky feet I would think we see some convergence but the most of it for my taste it's not sufficiently replicated and the evidence is not sufficiently strong that we can really stand there and say this is exactly how it is and and I I mean even if if this particular paper and so on one can question it I think it is for me at least it's a general concern how how our the science economy

01:34:23 functions so that's actually I'm rewarded in my career if I do something sexy and I'm not rewarded in my career if I do something really solid and and and this is I think it's a real concern it's rather rushed to do something new to get in into into this particular Journal that only publishes it if it's completely new or you have very good connections um and things like this yes so which is a real problem and if now another

01:34:53 problem I see for instance in in this field of meditation research that there's so much attention and and meanwhile also money funding going into particular programs and the most popular ones are mindfulness-based stress reduction mindfulness-based cognitive therapy are particularly in the UK that actually this is where all the resources are sucked into this is where all the people are trained in this is where well where

01:35:23 the whole attention is on and this means that at the same time alternative approaches don't action actually even have the chance to demonstrate their effectiveness and so on so actually what I think what we're seeing to a large extent in this field it is a narrowing instead of a widening and hopefully it's just a short-term narrowing that then later on it gets wider but I I don't know so actually although I know that there's a lot of discussion about this

01:35:53 particular point I think what they emphasize something that's that's true for meditation research I think and that's also true for other areas not only psychology and I think most of the models in in physics have never been replicated because there's no no research to to do and they're just theoretical models anyway so that's a another question maybe but the the strength of the evidence I I

01:36:24 think we have to be really careful here I totally agree with that and my question about bias was I like that counter question but it was sort of philosophical in the sense that I've never seen research go very far that contradicted the personal opinions of the researcher right I would have put it the other way around everyone that enters a given meditation tradition that has a good relationship with the people in it prove to themselves that that tradition is correct

01:36:54 in other words they get the results that they were looking for yeah well I know but that's I'm gonna just whatever um hi my name is Jesse first of all thank you from all sharing your insights I really enjoyed the discussion um my question is I I guess I'll start with um I've studied a lot of like Buddhist teachings um and various teachings regard that

01:37:26 have a lot of meditation in them um and one thing that I've always came across is sometimes a lot of the teachings either Russian way parts of human of being a human um or they contradict themselves and one example is relationships so the the notion of not attachment Buddhism about not being attached but then there's all this mindfulness jargon about mindfulness and relationships and

01:37:58 attached in romantic relationships I'm like what the hell does that even mean attach your romance relationship like doesn't that contradict itself um so I guess my question is is like mindfulness and the fact that we are imperfect beings and actually I don't even know if I want to say it perfect just sometimes it suggests this notion

01:38:29 that um as we're talking about earlier this whole year the now uh holier than I don't know how you say it earlier than thou um notion of being a kind of Guru that is above me face desires like sexuality and the desire to really connect with people um and be angry when in reality it's like you know if if if lust and anger and all of these other things that we that it seems like so many times I hear put down

01:39:01 are very real and we feel them um how do you address that huh what a wonderful thing to explore at least for a lifetime I think I mean I don't have any answers certainly but I I'm not even interested lately in answers about it but I think that one of the things that's a common misunderstanding is that there's this

01:39:33 idea of non-attachment which is really what it means the original meaning in a clay show was a it's about not clinging which is very different from feeling an attachment right and but when I I know when I want to cling to something it doesn't feel great it doesn't if whether it's a person or a state of mind or some outer reality

01:40:03 wow it feels shitty you know and and also or when someone is being clinging towards me it doesn't feel good right and so to me it's about just you know one of my favorite Zen teachers uh uchiyama roshi just talked about maybe the whole practice is learning how to open her hand so in some ways about just noticing the moments when we're like this

01:40:33 and learning how to open our hand so it's we're not clinging to something it doesn't mean you're not feeling a connection or love or desire or anything but it's not like mine mine or yours yours you know it's like I don't know so another because I've had similar for me I think it's important what I was for me was understanding that a lot of the teachings in the time of the Buddha were aimed at monks you know people who

01:41:05 are not lay people and he had very different teachings for Lay people than I did for the monks and so the whole thing of you know extinguishing the fires of lust and greed and hatred that's for the monks you know he doesn't expect the you know householders to be able to do that because I mean you really you need 30 years in a cave to do that so um but I think it's something to you know decrease those I think by the way he's talking of like you know not being so tightly attached so it's not eliminating it's reducing thank you thank you

01:41:40 um I like that somebody had said everything is natural and um so my question is on anxiety disorders and kind of the unbalanced mind I had a panic attack which I never had before um a few months ago back in November and kind of found myself stuck in a kind of fear of fear kind of place and I downloaded this app called headspace which is like guided meditation and uh

01:42:12 that has really helped me find a balance of mind again and return to normalcy and but there was a push when I first went to the doctors for going for um to for medication and stuff and since there's like a history of depression and stuff in my family they were leaning towards medication but I found that I didn't want to go that route because I've seen the effects of medication that I've had on members of my family so my curiosity is if there is

01:42:44 any uh data that you guys have or thoughts that kind of reflect that kind of similarities or differences in the changes of the wiring of the brain or the functioning of the Mind between medication and meditation different studies yeah well I I mean okay I'm first I'm not talking about the Neuroscience but more on on clinical data I I would say I before I I mentioned actually the the data is not very robust the the one area that has

01:43:15 where the data are most robust is actually the use of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for treating people with recurrent depression this is the best established evidence in the whole area and there the evidence shows that it is as effective as medication so and basically what the what it actually means you I think you can choose between meditation and medication yeah so that's that's yeah and and then at least in the UK for now

01:43:47 there's a big discussion how to with depression being such a such a huge problem in or uh yeah in society how to generate a provision for this so how to make sure that actually there are enough people who who can offer mindfulness-based cognitive therapy because it's not something you can just pick up like this do a weekend course and then you're you're there but so from from the clinical research the I would

01:44:17 say this is the best established evidence that we have so far you know so and maybe you want to say something from the Neuroscience so if you if you decide to go for the meditation or medication or physical exercise access is your choice right yeah for sure different medication may work on your brain on your body in a different way they target different systems right they talk in certain Seasons then also you influence the

01:44:47 other system let's see you use a term called a balance right refer to your question balance yeah so you know if a person has a depression problem so the doctor tends to give the stimulants try to change if more anxiety more answers tend to use the present this kind of medication try to balance right now you will see how Bruno responds office early response if you overdose it or wrong dosage that go to another extreme

01:45:19 so you go to the meditation or swimming or working or working on others it's a natural way but meditation has is helpful but doesn't mean to fit everybody right nothing can feed everybody so it's your choice but you need to study but the more so engaged in the concept data there are so many things you ask your good friend you ask your family member you ask people who love

01:45:49 you give you idea maybe much better well and it sounds like you found a good one yeah yeah thank you thank you very much appreciate it so my question has to do with belief right I feel like in society especially Western culture I can't speak about Eastern culture I haven't experienced it or the Western culture there's an absence of belief in faith in society you know there's a decline of religion and or you know at least uh classical

01:46:20 forms of religion and more interest in mindfulness or or meditation these different types of um I don't know self-sustaining uh understandings so what my question really is is what is the importance of belief and I don't mean in the sense of like yes of course if you believe in something and you do it and you you are likely to to obtain what you've set up to do but in the in the actual meditative State I mean

01:46:51 do you have to we talked about being right so so I mean is there a belief of being or is there an absence of belief well I'm a little confused in that regard and I'm I just want to understand police relevance to the meditative State I got a point yeah actually the being or doing or whatever other term is not the thought process it's action-based process

01:47:22 like you feel hungry you get eating you feel so say you have to drink right so I think Western mind want to make everything precisely control like we have a exact language I'm going to visit London tomorrow I use I will than tomorrow actually doesn't need a will I go to London tomorrow tomorrow all everybody knows the will

01:47:53 right so we try to conceptualize everything in detail that we believe okay we can move from here but in reality many many things is beyond the concept you learn language when you're a child you just learn from imprison learning right yeah many many things we have two ways you can do explicit learning so you want to find out the meaning concept the

01:48:24 reasoning capacity another part implicit most the gut feeling so when I train the people I always encourage people to make decisions to follow their own heart and feeling sometimes you feel good you do it not good I don't listen to others I follow my heart my feeling because most people are living in a small box we are fixed trained from previous

01:48:55 experience learning school education parents media but we never think how we should do but we all we were only told what we should do we never think why how we can do we can create differently I think their part you need your own thinking confusion is good step confusion means you think in different ways right you think in different ways you compare then you'll find a way in this reality

01:49:26 actually just based on your passion you don't need to worry this is good that is bad this thing will help you help others not harm others you can do you learn you're learning from doing this is the present moment right but it's so you know just to add I really appreciate what you're saying and that I know many people come to our Center to learn how to meditate because they have a belief and faith that they're going to feel more peaceful and better

01:49:59 they're going to feel better and I usually try to raise the flag of like is not the place you want to come then because actually it's not about that it's about being with whatever is arising but if you're going for better or you have a belief and that you're going to feel better or peaceful or Serene or whatever it is you should go to somewhere else you know and so I think in some ways some of the beliefs I think sometimes get in the way

01:50:31 of actual our experience so maybe going back to your point about just the path itself yeah right yeah thank you hi my question has to do with meditation and its effect on job performance specifically is there any study out there that has looked into how meditation has affected people's performance on the job and even looking at specific jobs such as ones that are

01:51:01 high stress versus ones that are low stress baseball player versus secretary EMT professional versus lawyers snipers versus Carpenters I don't know about that last part there are definitely studies showing the impacts workplace you might be interested in a book called search inside yourself so out at Google there is the guy who's in charge of HR started meditating he realized this is really good so he tried to bring mine you know mbsr you know into Google no one signed up even though

01:51:33 they're all stressed out right so and he's realized okay well so they called it mindfulness for interpersonal interaction or something like that because that's you know all the programmers really that's something they were willing to admit that they needed help with so they all started doing mindfulness for that reason but of course they got the health the stress reduction benefits as well so the book talks about all about bringing mindfulness into Google um so there's that and there's also a book by George Mumford he worked with a bunch of Elite basketball players

01:52:03 um and so there's definitely and there's several people who have worked with at least Sports athletes bringing mindfulness to it and again it's been extremely beneficial so like George Barkley and stuff like that have used mindfulness among other people um so definitely I don't know about every single solitary and is it better for you know this prototype person versus that type of person but certainly even for high stress people for athletes it's highly effective there's also um quite a few Wall Street Bankers who admitted that the only way they could do what they do is because they meditate um

01:52:35 hi um I recently came across a few graphs I think it was of eegs if I'm not mistaken uh when the brain frequencies of the frontal mid in the hind are all at the same level a certain magic happens and um I think I know for sure Transcendental Meditation and there are other methods out there that are lesser research um wondering if anyone here has input on what exactly comes of of that magic so

01:53:08 to speak in the short and long term over someone's period of life whether it accumulates accelerates exponential anything having to do with just when all the brain frequencies throughout the brain are evenly balanced you go first you'll go first I don't know about this yeah I'm not sure about the magic to me on this so yeah maybe we should not use the magic I think if we talk about the broom wave we use

01:53:38 the EEG right yeah Peter has done lots of work using EGR mindfulness meditation yeah we also have some study you know our brain always send the message through the electric way based on the neurotransmitter yeah they always work so one person receives meditation there are virus meditation so many years ago one kind of meditation can improve Alpha

01:54:09 wave from a back of the brain yeah that move or the front it's one master the recent mess I also find that the situate sit away so Alpha ways is When You Close Your Eyes the alpha will increase a little bit yeah when people age the other ways decrease so Sita with means it will means in the attention state but it also relaxed a little bit slow so some meditation study also found a

01:54:40 gamma wave right very fast so I think that this is just the one index of brain activity right something happened in the brain so some people explain oh you are more attentive that's why after we will sit away some people said oh the Brewing more synchronized this why gamma way yeah just like we sleep every night so your brain will change right so the integration though is that Gamma or

01:55:12 Theta or what when there's the integrative effects What wave would would fit that description you know I think what you're talking about conclusion right yeah I'm guessing what you're talking about is the study that Richie did in Antoine many years ago where they had the monks and so when the monks go into their meditative State they have what your experience describing which is a high amplitude gamma across the entire brain um I don't know that they called it magic though but I think they just said that when the monks are meditating that's what happens

01:55:42 Peter you want to say something what did I want to say I'm sorry um something about the magic I hope not about the magic yeah that's what we want to hear about no I mean I think I just wanted to add so because it was a question of synchronization for for any uh oscillating activity for any brain waves to be to be picked up this means that this is an indication that there is synchronization yeah so otherwise if if

01:56:15 every neuron was was firing randomly on its own we wouldn't pick up anything from the surface so it doesn't matter which which frequency range we look at that whenever we see a clear oscillating activity this means that there's a large which is a synchronization yeah this is an index that there is synchronization and then the general idea is if if we're the the higher frequency ranges like gamma and and so on so around third of from 30 35 Hertz upwards that this is a

01:56:48 synchronization that happens more on the local level yeah so it's more close in in specific brain regions more or less a closely related brain located brain regions and then the the slower oscillations that they are more related to long range synchronizations so let's this gives a bit of an idea but for for anything meaningful to happen in the brain that doesn't we need or we

01:57:19 need this synchronization that we need a lot of neurons doing the same thing at the same time and this then actually shows up as electrical activity on on the brain and one cannot draw conclusions from seeing that there is there is a wave what the what the content of the experience is of course is we cannot see at all yeah so and one can also not necessarily say that an increase is better than a decrease or the decrease is better than

01:57:50 an increase if we just see maybe some some changes and then we need to the introspection actually the subjective experience to actually link yeah the what we observe in brain activity to link it what actually might be happening you know so then we can get some understanding what these different signatures might mean yeah and there we are still very much at the beginning yeah so we say linking certain so-called third person data to first person person

01:58:22 data there's some discussions how we can do this and a few attempts at doing this but it's still quite quite limited yeah it is maybe can I just add this I'm just thinking about your bias question you know much earlier on so another way of looking at it is actually that we're using first person data there yes so and of course you can see it as a bias but actually if for studying meditation ideally we the researcher has some idea what they're studying

01:58:54 and in the same way that maybe somebody who studies Sports has some idea what the sports is they're studying so just in some disciplines it's they're people are more skeptical about biases than in other disciplines because maybe it looks more subjective because it's not so easy to observe it from outside just add one point yeah I think people tend to interpret certain neural markers of physiology index as good or bad we turn to because

01:59:28 from our belief experience so the just like Peter said the increase or decrease the spring wave certain thing we cannot conclude increased good decrease the bad so decrease stress hormone with things good right yeah increase productivity seems good but some study also show the increase means you put a lot of effort you are not in a relaxed State not seeing lots of energy so related to the bios so

01:59:58 everybody has biles including researcher because everybody is in learning stay in The Learning Journey for the whole life we certainly has bios we acknowledge also signs it doesn't mean it's a guaranteed way is you can show the absolute truth it's a relative truth we just try to try to track the truth we are on the way another conclusion yet

02:00:30 yes can I yeah okay Sarah unfortunately the future is is now thank you Sarah thank you okay okay you can you can we are not stopping because you can live but uh you can ask your question um I I come I come out of the extreme

02:01:02 western edge of the Eastern intuitive traditions and there's a formulation from from Philip caplo roshi that unlike what you said um the Buddhist path depends on on three pillars one of them being faith in the in the record of transmission that there is something to be reached it can necessarily be

02:01:34 accurately described in in language but that Faith as a structuring in his view was imperative um and I was I was sort of disappointed in in his disciple or of the the the son of one of his his brother disciples not bringing that onto the floor but you know but in but in regard to the reworking of of negative emotion what Philip Capital rushi also also was very

02:02:05 clear um and I I heard him in person Advocate one hour of meditation a day to keep a practice going in that in his mind that was sufficient and two hours to move forward and once I started to practice that I realized that it was like clockwork that there would be a shift of experience and it would last the the first shift in

02:02:36 experience into a into a relaxation kind of thing in a calmness wouldn't really shift my experience the rest of the day but what would happen if the two at the second and third increments were decisive in work in reworking my emotional life for the entire rest of the day and that's that's talked about in the in the in the western edge of these traditions in the Kabbalah as being

02:03:06 as each of us having having levels of soul or five levels of soul and when you activate a higher level in that mapping it's just a mapping then the energies are still there but they're reworked in a greater integration and and okay so now I want now I wanted to ask the panel about something related to that teaching of Philip caploci who was really the

02:03:36 first American zen master in advocating an hour a day of meditation as a minimum for keeping a meditative practice going What I Hear around me for the last decade in the in the Buddhist world and also in the TM world is 20 minutes a day will do you and that's not my experience about something it's neither it's neither what

02:04:07 I heard from a master or it my in my experience it's not borne out so is that just marketing what is that about and what's the research about about quantity and quality so it's a good question actually you ask them the quantity and the quality of practice and what's this quantity and quality can benefit can influence the life right um this is my experience yeah when I

02:04:38 started my training when I was young so it pushed me hard similar to you we do at least two hours per session try to build the foundation of your physiology change it's my experience then later on when you build this physiology change like like very intensive training make something change right this kind of change can

02:05:09 transfer to the daily life but you need to be aware so our study also show the lens of training lens of practice really matter it means lasting effect can influence also the quality of practice is most important like you sit an hour but always mind wondering so the quality practice maybe just five minutes 10 minutes it happened so in Market I think

02:05:39 everybody is busy when I moved to us I was told New Yorker is a busiest Guru right yeah this is why Americans love the fast food fast life so certainly the person cannot practice an hour two hour per day but they can do 20 minutes 30 minutes like I don't have a five-star hotel room to leave but I can leave a three star so I just I think it's the flexible way

02:06:11 so the compromising way but if a person really want to become professional whatever children or Master practitioner as I learned from my teacher my master they practice over two hours per day over and they enjoy they're not just a Muslim to do I need to one hour two hour no they enjoy you cannot do it once you start it's it's just the quality of life is just it's something different

02:06:42 entirely it's the world to come that's the way it's talked about in the western tradition it's entering the world to come while you're here yes I think you may have a different idea right well I I've met many people have meditated for decades many many long Retreats and long hours and our complete well because I've met myself you know but uh no but the quality versus the quantity thing

02:07:12 on the one hand on the other hand I do think to get good at something if we think of it as a skill or a tool to also takes practice so I think both of those things are true the faith question is a different question but I think it's dangerous to think about if you just clock in enough hours then you're good you know I think that's I'm always worried about that and yeah yeah yeah so I think it's more about dedication and

02:07:45 relationships you see how long it takes there's nothing to argue yeah these are the last two questions and please make them brief because we are over our time all right so this question is informed by two of the conversations that have been one of them was the conversation about intention when um I forget I don't know I don't remember the lady's name

02:08:15 but was talking about the importance of intention when you're meditating and then the other conversation was the one where um sorry I clearly don't know anyone's name but uh when you were talking about um the Buddha the Sangha and the Dharma and how it's more than just meditation and um that got me thinking because in theory if I were like an evil person or like very selfish I could just do um concentration meditation get very good at concentrating make myself more effective at like getting rich and powerful and harmful or whatever

02:08:46 um so if we're just kind of if you look at meditationary like how meditation is studied in Labs is it kind of just extracted from the greater picture that it is of the Buddha the Dharma and the Sangha and is that a fair are we kind of short-changing the tradition from which it steeped of course well I think when you take the song out your short-changing tradition you're actually leaving out like the third leg of a stool which doesn't stand well and for me when I don't have

02:09:19 relationships with peers in a process I get pretty in my head and so I think to stay in relationship is so for me has been really essential for my process and my path and it's not easy I think it's hard one but I think that I'd be so curious if that's ever even brought in as a variable for in research

02:09:50 of course as when we're doing empiricals or scientific research we somehow we have to kind of Define and limit the the conditions that we're working in so that's the one question is how are we investigating this and I think another question is how is meditation practice applied in the in the world so and and for some research we try to to isolate the the meditation

02:10:21 also especially if we're directly interested in what are the the for instance neural processes of what is going on if the if the influences are so complex including other people well then actually we have then we might not see such such pure signals if you want to so that's the one thing so and but as long as the research the science is aware of it that

02:10:52 we're kind of like we do in many other fields as well that we isolated to study it and but then it that it's about putting it together again then I think this is fine if one if one then would take it to mean that meditation practice in isolation you know on one's own without any framework without intention without just doing it as a as an isolated technique would be would be the

02:11:22 way then then I think we would make a mistake yeah you know I think it's a great question and I would want to you know look at it both in its historical context but also outside of it because those three words are specific to the Buddhist tradition so if you say well how's that going to be applicable to everyone then you could you know I I translate it as something like the Buddha has to do that orientation has to do with the transparency of your own awareness to yourself in other words a

02:11:53 kind of a self-knowledge that maybe comes about through meditation or maybe through something else the Dharma is the law of the psyche or the law that you find that lurks in terms of the structure of how you are in the world and Sangha is your community Sangha you know so that might be two people it might be five people it doesn't have to be you know a religious community it's you know we're all embedded community so the question is how do we relate to each other you know dare I say in the here and now

02:12:23 just to contradict myself thank you I had one thing related to the individual group yeah the research a certain one to limit the factors so we want to get something then try to add more but in reality my data shows so actually the tuner the teacher also is an active ingredient in the meditation then the group setting like Community we

02:12:56 use the group relationship the dynamic is also important in supporting some people not everyone Some people prefer individual practice some people benefit more from the group session we find both situations yeah so some people even said this culture more individualized culture than Eastern more Collective culture but I find all difference it depends on the person yeah I agree thank you

02:13:30 I was hoping that some of you would have discussed the benefits of meditation um uh and and and meditating it it helps me bring my awareness and my attention into a single moment uh focusing on the breath and and and uh I can then when I apply it to to reading to bring that same degree of concentration to to reading it not only speeds the rate at which it wouldn't read but it improves uh recollection and and cognition

02:14:00 um another thing is that meditation helps um uh may find my own Center it helps me focus on what other people are saying without my judging it without my you know thinking about what I'm going to say in response um uh I've been hyperkinetical from the time I was a child and I'm still in my old age you know it's very difficult for me to sit still but in meditation I can find the stresses in the various places in my body and I can focus on that and

02:14:34 and and and and and make peace with that and let them let it you know and I can I can sit still in meditation where it's very difficult to do it out of the times uh and there are so many things that that meditation it really helps in dealing with my my daily life and I was I was hoping that you know this discussion would have included more of that uh but nonetheless thank you very much thank you that's it thank you [Applause]

02:15:14 thank you oh yeah