Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body

by Daniel Goleman

Valuing just the heights misses the true point of practice: to transform ourselves in lasting ways day to day.

“The true mark of a meditator is that he has disciplined his mind by freeing it from negative emotions.”

As Martin Luther King Jr. commented on the Good Samaritan tale, those who did not help asked themselves, If I stop to help, what will happen to me? But the Good Samaritan asked, If I don’t stop to help, what will happen to him?

Decades before we began to drown in a sea of distractions, cognitive scientist Herbert Simon made this prescient observation: “What information consumes is attention. A wealth of information means a poverty of attention.”

When the Dalai Lama once was asked what had been the happiest point in his life, he answered, “I think right now.”

The brain’s default mode activates when we are doing nothing that demands mental effort, just letting our mind wander; we hash over thoughts and feelings (often unpleasant) that focus on ourselves, constructing the narrative we experience as our “self.”

“If the heart wanders or is distracted,” advised Francis de Sales (1567–1622), a Catholic saint, “bring it back to the point quite gently . . . and even if you did nothing during the whole of your hour but bring your heart back . . . though it went away every time, your hour would be very well-employed.”

We are inspired by the vision of the Dalai Lama as he reached eighty years of age. He encourages us all to do three things: gain composure, adopt a moral rudder of compassion, and act to better the world.