The Science of Meditation: The expert guide to the neuroscience of mindfulness and how to harness it

by Daniel Goleman

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

Meditation is a catch-all word for myriad varieties of contemplative practice, just as sports refers to a wide range of athletic activities.

the specific benefits from one or another type get stronger the more total hours of practice you put in.

the Summer Research Institute (SRI), a gathering devoted to furthering the rigorous study of meditation. The meetings are organized by the Mind and Life Institute,

As of this writing, thirteen more meetings have followed (with two so far in Europe, and possibly future meetings in Asia and South America).

we can now show that the more hours you practice, the greater the benefits you reap.

No matter what he was doing, he seemed to remain effortlessly in a blissful, loving space, perpetually at ease.

Clinical psychology, Dan’s field, was fixated on looking for a specific problem like high anxiety and trying to fix that one thing.

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.

The trouble with drug-induced states is that after the chemical clears your body, you remain the same person as always.

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

Dan’s study deployed physiological measures like heart rate and sweat response, which typically can’t be intentionally controlled, and so yield a more accurate portrait of a person’s true reactions—especially

differing types of meditation produce unique results—a fact that should make it a routine move to identify the specific type being studied.

many of the reported benefits in the early stages of practice can be chalked up to expectation, social bonding in the group, instructor enthusiasm, or other “demand characteristics.”

But the brain’s executive center, located behind the forehead in our prefrontal cortex, gives us both a unique advantage among all animals and a paradoxical disadvantage: the ability to anticipate the future—and worry about it—as well as to think about the past—and regret.

it’s not the things that happen to us that are upsetting but the view we take of those doings.

If you give the back of your hand a hard pinch, different brain systems mobilize, some for the pure sensation of pain and others for our dislike of that pain. The brain unifies them into a visceral, instant Ouch!

Like people who suffer from post-traumatic stress syndrome, victims of burnout are no longer able to put a halt to their brain’s stress response—and so, never have the healing balm of recovery time.

their brains had stronger operative connectivity between the prefrontal cortex, which manages reactivity, and the amygdala, which triggers such reactions. As neuroscientists know, the stronger this particular link in the brain, the less a person will be hijacked by emotional downs and ups of all sorts.

that relationship is so strong that a person’s reactivity level can be predicted by the connectivity.

the more hours of practice, the more quickly the amygdala recovered from distress.

Brain research tells us of three kinds of empathy.6 Cognitive empathy lets us understand how the other person thinks; we see their perspective. In emotional empathy we feel what the other is feeling. And the third, empathic concern or caring, lies at the heart of compassion.

when another group instead got instructions in compassion—feeling love for those suffering—their brains activated a completely different set of circuits, those for parental love of a child.

In many East Asian countries the name Kuan Yin, the revered symbol of compassionate awakening, translates as “the one who listens and hears the cries of the world in order to come and help.”

Unlike other benefits of meditation that emerge gradually—like a quicker recovery from stress—enhancing compassion comes more readily.

Just as with speaking, the brain seems primed to learn to love.

extraordinary altruists, people who donated one of their kidneys to a stranger in dire need of a transplant. Brain scans discovered that these compassionate souls have a larger right-side amygdala compared to other people of their age and gender.

Loving-kindness also boosts the connections between the brain’s circuits for joy and happiness and the prefrontal cortex, a zone critical for guiding behavior.20 And the greater the increase in the connection between these regions, the more altruistic a person becomes following compassion meditation training.

when you focus on someone else’s suffering, you forget your own troubles.

brain studies have long shown women are more attuned to other people’s emotions than are men.

Factors from feeling pressured for time, to whether you identify with the person in need, to whether you are in a crowd or alone—each of these factors can matter. One open question: Will cultivating a compassionate outlook prime a person sufficiently to overcome these other forces in the face of someone’s need?

The ultimate source of peace, he said, is in the mind—which, far more than our circumstances, determines our happiness.

Ordinarily we notice something unusual just long enough to be sure it poses no threat, or simply to categorize it. Then habituation conserves brain energy by paying no attention to that thing once we know it’s safe or familiar.

The faculty, graduate students, and postdocs she met there were a supportive community, who encouraged Amishi.

“That which is aware of sadness is not sad,”

Our hunch would be that pushing a neural system like attention in a lasting way requires not just these short trainings and continued daily practice, but also intensive booster sessions, as was the case with those who were at the shamatha retreat and then were tested five months later in Cliff Saron’s study. Otherwise the brain’s wiring will regress to its previous status: a life of distraction punctuated with periods of concentration.

although the brain makes up only 2 percent of the body’s mass, it consumes about 20 percent of the body’s metabolic energy

The brain, it seems, stays just as busy when we are relaxed as when we are under some mental strain.

“a wandering mind is an unhappy mind.”

This self-system mulls over our life—especially the problems we face, the difficulties in our relationships, our worries and anxieties. Because the self ruminates on what’s bothering us, we feel relieved when we can turn it off.

When we become lost in thoughts during meditation, we’ve fallen into the default mode and its wandering mind.

the monkey mind—the incessant self-focused chatter that so often fills our minds when nothing else is pressing.

“So long as you grasp at the self, you stay bound to the world of suffering.”

While most ways to relieve us from the burden of self are temporary, meditation paths aim to make that relief an ongoing fact of life—a lasting trait.

thoughts, feelings, and impulses are passing, insubstantial mental events. With this insight we don’t have to believe our thoughts; instead of following them down some track, we can let them go.

mind training lessens the activity of our “self.” “Me” and “mine” lose their self-hypnotic power; our concerns become less burdensome.

Our sense of self gets woven in an ongoing personal narrative that threads together disparate parts of our life into a coherent story line.

the more we think of the well-being of others, the less we focus on ourselves.

the brain of a novice works hard while that of the expert expends little energy.

What at first demands attention and exertion becomes automatic and effortless.