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

by Daniel Goleman

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 mind in meditation practice tells us. 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, sensory phenomena like flashes of light or a sense of bodily lightness. “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, and an unbroken one-pointed focus on the meditation target. The Visuddhimagga lists seven more levels of jhana, with progress marked by successively subtle feelings of bliss and rapture, and stronger equanimity, along with an increasingly firm and effortless focus. In the last four levels, even bliss, a relatively gross sen...