In SIDDHARTHA’S
BRAIN, longtime Guardian
science journalist and practicing Buddhist James Kingsland
investigates the ancient and modern takes on the health and
spiritual benefits of meditation and mindfulness in this
highly-readable, cutting-edge assessment that shows how Siddhartha,
known to us as the Buddha, anticipated the findings of modern
science by two millennia. Moving effortless between science and
scripture, Kingsland charts Siddhartha’s spiritual journey and
explains how new research by leading neuroscientists and clinical
psychologists – many of who are interviewed here – suggests that
the Buddha’s mindfulness practice reconfigures our brains to make
us sharper, smarter, healthier and happier, and that it can help
treat stress, anxiety, depression, chronic pain, hypertension and
substance abuse
Many
have argued that Buddhism is not a religion at all, at least not in
the conventional sense. To an atheist and skeptic like myself, this
lack of a supernatural belief system makes Buddhism very appealing.
When I first became interested in its practices and philosophy,
some five years ago, I was also intrigued by the way “sin” in the
language of other religions—lust, gluttony, sloth, wrath, envy,
pride, and so forth—is labeled more neutrally by Buddhists as
“unskillful behavior” that will reap painful consequences through
the ineluctable operation of the laws of cause and effect. The
implication seems to be that to be a good, contented human being is
a skill that can be learned, like driving a car or baking a cake.
The more you practice, the better you will get at it. Viewed this
way, to judge someone for their greed or pride starts to look as
misguided as condemning them for not being able to drive or bake.
Nevertheless, why should Buddhism be any better than the other
world religions—or indeed a completely secular approach—at teaching
such skills? All things mystical and religious, regardless of
whether or not they involve a god, a creed, or commandments, are
viewed with suspicion by many scientists and nonbelievers,
including the majority of those I have worked with over the years
in my job as a science writer and editor. And the cure Buddhism
claims to offer for the afflicted human mind is largely based on
meditation, which for professional skeptics like myself looks
initially like just another health fad. Mindfulness meditation,
which involves cultivating nonjudgmental awareness of the present
moment, has gone global. There are programs tailored for use in
schools in the UK, for young offenders in New York City, for US
Marines awaiting deployment, for firefighters in Florida and taxi
drivers in Iran, to name just a few.
But, in
intellectually conservative circles, announcing that you meditate
is still likely to be met with a snort of derision. Claims in the
past about the efficacy of meditation have been tainted with a
certain amount of woo-woo New Age mumbo jumbo. In several countries
around the world, people still remember elections during the 1990s
when candidates for the Natural Law Party advocated transcendental
meditation as the cure for all the world’s ills. The party declared
that its “systematic and scientifically tested” pro- gram would
involve thousands of meditators creating “coherence in national
consciousness” to reduce stress and negativity in society through
the power of levitation. I remember watching the party’s surreal
1994 European election broadcast in the United Kingdom, which
showed cross-legged young men bouncing across mattresses on their
bottoms. We were informed that a group of these “yogic flyers” had
already reduced the crime rate in Merseyside by 60 per- cent over
the previous seven years.
Against
this backdrop, scientists looking into the potential clinical
benefits of mindfulness meditation have had to work hard over the
past few decades to be taken seriously. Several researchers have
told me that when they started out in the field, it was consid-
ered career suicide to admit to your peers that you were
investigat- ing meditation. This has all changed now. Some of the
world’s most respected clinical psychologists and neuroscientists
are now involved, and their papers are published in mainstream
journals such as Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences, and The Lancet. The credibility of the field has been
enhanced enormously through the use of new brain-scanning
technologies such as fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging),
which has shown in study after study that meditation produces
discern- ible changes in brain activity.
Another
remarkable development has been recent studies of the brains of
Buddhist contemplatives who have clocked decades of meditation
experience in various monastic traditions. This research has
largely been inspired by formal discussions since the 1980s between
scientists and the Dalai Lama. One of the neuro- scientists most
closely involved in this work is Richard Davidson, from the
University of Wisconsin, who says we still have much to learn from
contemplatives. “This research has underscored the potential value
of these traditions for cultivating healthier habits of mind,” he
told me. “Mental practice can lead to fundamental changes in the
brain to support these new habits.” He believes that the brain’s
innate “plasticity”—its capacity for rewiring itself as we learn
from experiences and develop new skills—can be harnessed to promote
well-being. According to this view, happiness is a skill that, like
any other, can be developed through diligent practice.
All the
same, there remains a certain wariness of meditation. One common
misunderstanding, which inspired my cynical joke that morning at
the monastery, is that it transforms people into creatures who have
had all their desires, ambitions, and personality excised—zombies,
if you will. When I played back the recording of my interview with
Ajahn Amaro, I was relieved to discover that it was he who first
brought up the subject. I had suggested to him that Buddhism, with
its emphasis on cultivating “selflessness,” went against the grain
of Western culture, with its emphasis on endless striving for
self-advancement. It’s what gets us out of bed in the mornings and
pays our bills. He disagreed. “People think that in Buddhist
practice you’re meant to be free from desire and so then we
shouldn’t want anything. They take it to mean that we’re supposed
to be totally passive, or endeavoring to be a kind of zombie that
isn’t doing anything. It’s a radical misunderstanding, because a)
work does not mean suffering, and b) peace does not mean
inactivity. When we think ‘I want to be peaceful’ we think of
zoning out at the beach, but you can be completely at peace and
working hard at the same time. They are not antithetical to each
other.”
If
anything, this book will argue that the evidence from neuroscience
suggests that meditation can make people less zombie-like, by
giving them more control over their thoughts, emotions, and
behavior. Siddha¯rtha’s Brain is about the science of mindfulness
and the quest for spiritual enlightenment—or, to express the same
thing in less loaded terms, the search for optimum psychological
well-being. Enlightenment has distinct religious overtones, though
what Buddhists mean by the word is simply the full realization of
the way things truly are—free of any kind of delusion. This is not
so different from what scientists are trying to achieve when they
investigate the chemistry, physics, and biology of our world. But
what of that other slippery word, spiritual? As I have looked
deeper into mindfulness and Buddhism, the dividing line between the
spiritual guidance provided by teachers such as Ajahn Amaro and the
mindfulness courses provided by mental health practitioners has
started to look less and less clear-cut. In the past decade,
thousands of studies have been published that tested the efficacy
of secular forms of mindfulness meditation for treating drug
addiction, depression, anxiety, and many other afflictions of the
mind. Whether you believe this approach is seeking to improve
people’s “spiritual health” or their “mental well-being” is a
matter of perspective. Your choice of words will depend on whether
mindfulness training is delivered in a monastery or a clinic. Ajahn
Amaro, in common with many other Buddhist teachers, sees himself as
much as a mental health counselor as a spiritual adviser. Every day
people share their anxieties, their problems, and hang-ups with
him. He listens and offers advice about possible courses of action.
When it comes down to it, there’s not that much difference between
his role and that of a secular expert in mindfulness
therapy.