Category Archives: Humanities

Buddhism and Health

From an article in the New York Times titled Is Buddhism Good for Your Health?:

“In Buddhist tradition,” Davidson explains, “‘meditation’ is a word that is equivalent to a word like ‘sports’ in the U.S. It’s a family of activity, not a single thing.” Each of these meditative practices calls on different mental skills, according to Buddhist practitioners. The Wisconsin researchers, for example, are focusing on three common forms of Buddhist meditation. “One is focused attention, where they specifically train themselves to focus on a single object for long periods of time,” Davidson says. “The second area is where they voluntarily cultivate compassion. It’s something they do every day, and they have special exercises where they envision negative events, something that causes anger or irritability, and then transform it and infuse it with an antidote, which is compassion. They say they are able to do it just like that,” he says, snapping his fingers. “The third is called ‘open presence.’ It is a state of being acutely aware of whatever thought, emotion or sensation is present, without reacting to it. They describe it as pure awareness.”

The fact that the brain can learn, adapt and molecularly resculpture itself on the basis of experience and training suggests that meditation may leave a biological residue in the brain — a residue that, with the increasing sophistication of new technology, might be captured and measured. “This fits into the whole neuroscience literature of expertise,” says Stephen Kosslyn, a Harvard neuroscientist, “where taxi drivers are studied for their spatial memory and concert musicians are studied for their sense of pitch. If you do something, anything, even play Ping-Pong, for 20 years, eight hours a day, there’s going to be something in your brain that’s different from someone who didn’t do that. It’s just got to be.”

Tomorrow Morning

Twenty-four Brand New Hours, by Thich Nhat Hanh:

Every morning, when we wake up we have twenty-four brand new hours to live. What a precious gift! We have the capacity to live in a way that these twenty-four hours will bring peace, joy and happiness to ourselves and others.

Peace is right here and now, in ourselves and in everything we do and see. The question is whether or not we are in touch with it. We don’t have to travel far away to enjoy the blue sky. We don’t have to leave our city or even our neighborhood to enjoy the eyes of a beautiful child. Even the air we breathe can be a source of joy.

We can smile, breathe, walk and eat our meals in a way that allows us to be in touch with the abundance of happiness that is available. We are very good at preparing to live, but not very good at living it. We know how to sacrifice ten years for a diploma, and we are willing to work very hard to get a job, a car, a house, and so on. But we have difficulty remembering that we are alive in the present moment, the only moment there is for us to be alive.

Managing Depression, Part III

The discussion continues regarding the list of tips I posted on how to manage depression. Chad raised some concerns and questions, sincerely and thoughtfully presented. In response to a comment someone left on his blog, he raises another question — an excellent one, though I don’t have an answer.

I want to say this nicely and eloquently, but I can’t, so I’m going to resort to bluntness. Is management of depression achievable or is it mere deception for the depressed?

I think that there are infinite levels of depression and all of them are difficult to measure with any sort of metric. It seems to me that an individual can go through several different levels on any given day. If the depressed individual follows this list, some other list, or the Atkins diet, is there any way to effectively measure the result?

Being Kind Feels Good

Wry and charming Sheila wrote a post about a concept dear to my heart: practicing kindness. Some call it karma. Others relate it to the Christian scripture about reaping what one sows. The folk adage, “You catch more flies with honey than vinegar” is another way of putting it. Regardless of how it’s articulated, it’s really rather easy to be kind. We have more time and energy to extend ourselves than we realize, once we become aware of the value of kindness.

Last week, the electric company sent a bill which included that of someone else in our neighborhood. I put it in an envelope with a short note explaining the situation and mailed it. It took less than five minutes, and I felt good knowing that she would be spared the hassle of tracking it down or paying late fees. To my surprise and pleasure, I received a note thanking me for taking the time. The “thank you” was a bonus. My motivation wasn’t to get reciprocation; it just felt good to do this.

There is a trait that is essential to the expression of kindness: empathy. It is the ability to imagine what another person is thinking, feeling, or experiencing and acting compassionately in response.

We are motivated to do good because it feels good. There’s nothing wrong or selfish in feeling good. Healthy good feeling is essential to altruism.

There is even a website, Random Acts of Kindness, which provides ideas and activities for use in classrooms and small groups. Positive interaction lightens the spirit, improves relationships, and probably promotes good physical health. Be inspired!

Mindfulness and Mental Health

I speak of mindfulness on this blog, yet you might wonder what it is, exactly. The article below describes in basic terms what is and is not mindful behavior. Something to remember, as well, is that it is a habit, and it takes time to learn. If you try to increase mindfulness and don’t do it as often as you’d like, remember that it doesn’t have to be perfect. I myself am not as mindful as I would like to be; it’s a continuous process of awakening.

From the Psychotherapy Networker’s Clinician’s Digest:

Cultivating Buddhist-like mindfulness might help some clients as much as trying to explore their past or change their behavior. In last April’s Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, psychologists Kirk Warren Brown and Richard Ryan present several studies showing that mindfulness — a calm, nonjudgmental, focused awareness of the present — is associated with such classic therapy goals as high personal autonomy and lower internal conflict and stress. They also find that many people, even without mindfulness training, already possess enough mindfulness to make a difference in their lives, suggesting that it’s a capacity within reach of many more people.
Continue reading →