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

by Daniel Goleman

The original aim, embraced in some circles to this day, focuses on a deep exploration of the mind toward a profound alteration of our very being.

There are, then, two paths: the deep and the wide. Those two paths are often confused with each other, though they differ greatly.

contemplative neuroscience,

As we see it, the most compelling impacts of meditation are not better health or sharper business performance but, rather, a further reach toward our better nature.

A stream of findings from the deep path markedly boosts science’s models of the upper limits of our positive potential. The further reaches of the deep path cultivate enduring qualities like selflessness, equanimity, a loving presence, and impartial compassion—highly positive altered traits.

these deep changes are external signs of strikingly different brain function.

Meditation is a catch-all word for myriad varieties of contemplative practice, just as sports

refers to a wide range of athletic activities. For both sports and meditation, the end results vary depending on what you actually do.

Mind and Life Institute,

The mission of Mind and Life is “to alleviate suffering and promote flourishing by integrating science with contemplative practice.”

Maharaji seemed always to be absorbed in some state of ongoing quiet rapture, and, paradoxically, at the same time was attentive to whoever

was with him.

What struck Dan was how utterly at peace and how kind Maharaji was. Like Khunu, he took an equal interest in everyone who came—and his visitors ranged from the highest-ranking government officials to beggars. There was something about his ineffable state of mind that Dan had never sensed in anyone before meeting Maharaji. No matter what he was doing, he seemed to remain effortlessly in a blissful, loving space, perpetually at ease. Whatever stat...

What had been “my body, my knee” becomes a sea of shifting sensation—a radical shift in awareness.

Such transformative moments mark the boundary of mindfulness, where we observe the ordinary ebb and flow of the mind, with a further reach where we gain insight into the mind’s nature. With mindfulness you would just note the stream of sensations. The next step, insight, brings the added realization of how we claim those sensations as “mine.” Insight into pain, for example, reveals how we attach a sense of “I” so it becomes “my pain” rather than being just a cacophony of sensations that change continuously from moment to moment.

Spiritual literature throughout Eurasia converges in descriptions of an internal liberation from everyday worry, fixation, self-focus, ambivalence, and impulsiveness—one that manifests as freedom from concerns with the self, equanimity no matter the difficulty, a keenly alert “nowness,” and loving concern for all.

In contrast, modern psychology, just about a century old, was clueless about this range of human potential. Clinical psychology, Dan’s field, was fixated on looking for a specific problem like high anxiety and trying to fix that one thing. Asian psychologies had a wider lens on our lives and offered ways to enhance our positive side.

British psychiatrist R. D. Laing,

James’s transcendent moments with the help of nitrous oxide led him to what he called an “unshakable conviction” that “our normal waking consciousness . . . is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.”

In brain science, excitement revolved around the recent discovery of neurotransmitters, the chemicals that send messages between neurons, like the mood regulator serotonin—magic molecules that could pitch us into ecstasy or despair.

The retreat was a high for Richie. He came away with a deep conviction that there were methods that could transform our minds to produce a profound well-being. We did not have to be controlled by the mind, with its random associations, sudden fears and angers, and all the rest—we could take back the helm.

Though centuries old, the Visuddhimagga remained the definitive guidebook for meditators in places like Burma and Thailand, that follow the Theravada tradition, and through modern interpretations still offers the fundamental template for insight meditation, the root of what’s popularly known as “mindfulness.”

The highways to the jackpot of utter peace,

the manual revealed, were a keenly concentrated mind on the one hand, merging with a sharply mindful awareness on the other.

At first the flow of thoughts rushes like a waterfall, which sometimes discourages beginners, who feel their mind is out of control. Actually, the sense of a torrent of thoughts seems to be due to paying close attention to our natural state, which Asian cultures dub “monkey mind,” for its wildly frenetic randomness.

As our concentration strengthens, wandering thoughts subside rather than pulling us down some back alley of the mind. The stream of

thought flows more slowly, like a river—and finally rests in the stillness of a lake, as an ancient metaphor for settling the m...

Sustained focus, the manual notes, brings the first major sign of progress, “access concentration,” where attention stays fixed on the chosen target without wandering off. With this level of concentration come feelings of delight and calm, and, sometimes, se...

“Access” implies being on the brink of total concentration, the full absorption called jhana (akin to samadhi in Sanskrit), where any and all distracting thoughts totally cease. In jhana the mind fills with strong rapture, bliss...

The Visuddhimagga lists seven more levels of jhana, with progress marked by successively subtle feelings of ...

equanimity, along with an increasingly firm and effortless focus. In the last four levels, even bliss, a relatively gross sensation, falls away, leaving only unshakable focus and equanimity. The highest reach of this ever more refined awareness has such subtl...

Jhana alone, the Buddha is said to have declared, was not the path to a liberated mind. Though strong concentration can be an enormous aid along the way, the Buddha’s path veers into a different kind of inner focus: the path of insight.

Here, awareness stays open to whatever arises in the mind rather than to one thing only—to the exclusion of all else—as in total concentration. The ability to maintain this mindfulness, an alert but nonreactive stance in attention, varies with our powers of one-pointedness. With mindfulness, the meditator simply notes without reactivity whatever comes into mind, such as thoughts or sensory impressions like sounds—and lets them go. The operative word here is go. If we think much of anything about what just arose, or let it trigger any reactivity at all, we have lost our mindful stance—unless that reaction or thought in turn becomes the object of mindfulness.

The Visuddhimagga describes the way in which carefully sustained mindfulness—“the clear and single-minded awareness of what actually happens” in our experience during successive moments—refines into a more nuanc...

of stages toward that final epiphany, ni...

This shift to insight meditation occurs in the relationship of our awareness to our thoughts. Ordinarily our thoughts compel us: our loathing or self-loathing generates one set of feelings and actions; our romantic fantasies quite another. But with strong mindfulness we can experience a deep sense in which self-loathing and romantic thoughts are the same: like all other thoughts, these are passing moments of mind. We don’t have to be chased through the day by our thoughts—they are a continuous series of short features, previews, and outtakes in a theater of the mind.

Once we glimpse our mind as a set of processes, rather than getting swept away by the seductions of our thoughts, we enter the path of insight.

There we progress through shifting again and again our relationship t...

each time yielding yet more insights into the nature of co...

Just as mud settling in a pond lets us see into the water, so the subsiding of our stream of thought lets us observe our mental machinery with greater clarity. Along the way, for instance, the meditator sees a bewilderingly rapid parade of moments of perception that race thr...

The Vissudhimagga holds this transformation to be the true fruit of reaching the highest levels of the path of insight.

For example, as the text says, strong negative feelings like greed and selfishness, anger and ill will, fade away. In their place comes the predominance of positive qualities like equanimity, kindness, compassion, and joy.

While the Visuddhimagga and the meditation manuals Dan had read were operator’s instructions for the mind, the Abhidhamma was a guiding theory for such manuals.

This psychological system came with a

detailed explanation of the mind’s key elements and how to traverse this inner landscape to make last...

Certain sections were compelling in their relevance to psychology, particularly the dynamic outlined between “healthy” and “unhealthy” states of mind.1 All too often our mental states fluctuate in a range that highlights desires, self-centeredness, sluggishness, agitation, and the like. These are among the unhealthy states on this map of mind. Healthy states, in contrast, include even-mindedness, composure, ongoing mindfulness, and realistic confidence. In...

The healthy states inhibit the unhealthy ones, and vice versa. The mark of progress along this path is whether our reactions in daily life signal a shift toward healthy states. The goal is to establ...

While immersed in deep concentration, a meditator’s unhealthy states are suppressed—but, as with that yogi in the bazaar, can emerge as strong as ever when the concentrative state subsides. In contrast, according to this ancient Buddhist psychology, attaining deepening levels of insight practice leads to a radical transformation, ultimately freeing the meditator’s mind of the unhealthy mix. A highly advanc...

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

That rule of thumb has stayed constant since before the time of the Visuddhimagga: It’s not the highs along the way that matter. It’s who you become.