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(indistinctive news all at once)
An investigation into the mental health status of South Africans
has revealed that one third of all South Africans
have mental illnesses.
Australia is hiding a shocking secret
and it’s one we really need to talk about.
Every week five kids, five,
commit suicide.
In the past thirty years the opening up of China has been very rapid
and people feel depression.
It is unprecedented.
WHO has declared India to be the most depressed country in the world
with 36% of Indians admitting to battling depression.
27% of citizens in the European Union, more than one in four,
suffer from mental health problems.
Too many Americans who struggle with mental health illnesses
are still suffering in silence rather than seeking help.
(indistinctive news all at once)
In the state of Virginia, in the city of Charlottesville,
since 1987 the Mind & Life Institute
has been conducting rigorous scientific research
to discover the secrets of mental well-being.
The Institute works with some of the best universities in the world,
such as MIT, Emory University, Brown University,
University of Zurich and Kyoto University.
The Mind & Life is a global community
and the work that we do is with
and because of the people who make up our broader global community.
And so for all of our programs,
we engage our colleagues from different parts of the world
to help us in being sure
that what we are doing is culturally sensitive
and is in fact going to be able to have
impact into their local communities.
The research has been informed by the very first
conversation
of the Dalai Lama with Western scientists,
which was the foundation of the Mind & Life Institute
almost 34 years ago.
I started my...
My world and my work was in health care.
I started my work as a nurse
and that was caring for people with very serious illness,
primarily people with cancer
and facing the end of life,
as well as those people who have mental illness.
2007 was my first personal experience with Mind & Life
as I attended the Summer Research Institute,
and I was just a regular attendee.
Being with neuroscientists and biological scientists
and social scientists, anthropologists and Buddhist study scholars
and philosophers,
was very refreshing.
Because there wasn’t another place we could do that.
(plane engine running)
All the people you see are members of the Mind & Life Institute.
They came here from all over the world.
We went to welcome them at the airport.
And soon, you will discover why they travelled to such a remote place...
(indistinctive chatting and cars honking)
...where McLeod Ganj is.
We’re going to be all the way up.
(car honking)
This is lower Dharamsala here.
- Dharamsala? - Yes, so Dharamsala...
McLeod Ganj is primarily Tibetan and Sikh
and then there’s a large refugee population in the south of India.
In the south?
(emotional music)
McLeod Ganj is a small village
located on the first slopes of the Himalaya,
in the state of Himachal Pradesh
and home to the Tibetan Government in Exile
as of the 1960s.
Most importantly, McLeod Ganj is
the official residence of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet.
India gave His Holiness a ready welcome
and other freedom-loving nations extended sympathy and support.
Many thousands of Tibetans
crossed the Himalayan barrier to the security offered by India.
In the 1950s a large part of the Tibetan population
left its homes and moved to India.
A few years later, the social movements of the 60s and 70s
pushed a growing number of Westerners to explore Asia, especially India,
giving them the chance to meet the Tibetan masters and scholars.
Impressed by their knowledge, many of the Westerners went on
to establish solid relations with them,
which still prosper today in many cities around the world.
A new chapter in human history was about to be written.
(intense music)
Since my childhood,
I have...
the interest about science.
Even Buddha’s own words,
we have the right to investigate.
If we find contradiction,
even Buddha’s own words,
then we have the right to reject.
So,
I developed a keen interest about modern science.
I think...
in the 70s, 60s... 70s,
I developed a desire
to discuss with modern scientists.
So then when I asked
some of my friends,
some Westerners:
“I want a serious discussion with modern scientists.”
Then some of them responded to me:
“Be careful!"
"Science is a killer
of religious faith.”
Then I immediately reflected
on Buddha’s own words of advice to us.
He mentioned: “All my followers,
"monks, scholars,
"should not accept my teaching out of faith,
"out of devotion,
"but rather thorough investigation.”
So then I start
meeting with scientists.
Mainly four fields:
cosmology,
neurobiology,
physics,
including quantum physics
and then psychology.
(electronic sounds)
We learned many useful information.
In the Asian Indian tradition,
there’s a lot of knowledge about mind, about emotions,
how to tackle these emotions.
That is relevant to humanity.
So then,
a number of scientists,
they really found useful information
from our tradition,
that is Indian tradition.
To better understand this story, we have to take a step back
to 1987.
(funky music)
On one of my trips to Asia in 1974,
I happened to be invited to a Tibetan monastery
that was set up for Westerners,
called Kopan, in Kathmandu.
Since I’d always been interested in the meaning of life
and what we’re really doing here,
I found the teachings offering a pretty complete explanation.
Not that I believe the explanation,
but from a logical basis I thought it was very complete.
To sit down with someone from the East
like His Holiness who had a great scholarly background
and actually discuss
some topics of interest in their research...
And I knew that His Holiness from his side was very interested
in speaking with Western scientists.
So it was really to create an atmosphere of deepening of understanding.
And I have a lab where I do some experiments relating to perception,
I do some work in artificial intelligence.
Just like many people: because at some point,
I realized that my life was a total mess
and I didn’t know what the hell was going on.
Finally I run in 1974
totally by, one would say, accident in Boulder, Colorado
into a Tibetan teacher called Trungpa Rinpoche,
who was then beginning to teach in the West.
He made so much sense in terms of how to work with oneself
that I started to practice.
About 3 or 4 years down my practice, I began to realize that
behind the whole tradition of Buddhist meditation, there is also such a rich...
epistemology and theory of mind, if you want to say it that way.
There is a natural attitude that both scientists and Buddhists have.
Both of them have a strong interest in examining
if I may say so, the phenomena in front of them.
That is they like to go into details of things.
And second of all, both of them like to examine,
particularly with reference to experience
rather than relying on dogma or purely on texts.
Buddhism is more natural a partner for a conversation to Science
than any other spiritual tradition on this planet, I would submit.
In Buddhist psychology, there's a lot of explanations.
About the physical level, modern science
has much knowledge, or information.
So in the past, the scientists
simply considered the brain.
Besides the brain, nothing there.
So even scientists, some scientists, reject the existence of the mind.
Varela,
a very nice person,
he also has genuine interest about Buddhism.
He himself you see, his own personal experience,
made something, a very close connection
with scientific research work
and similarly
combined with some Buddhist...
knowledge about mind, about emotion, these things.
He really helped to develop this Institution.
Then later Richard Davidson.
He’s a specialist about the brain.
Very, very useful. Very, very useful.
His knowledge is so wonderful
and his personal...
nature, also wonderful.
Wonderful.
Since, we’ve become very trusted close friends.
This incredible journey has brought us to the University of Wisconsin-Madison
to visit Dr. Richard Davidson,
founder and chair of the Center for Healthy Minds.
The center conducts unique and groundbreaking research
on the untapped potential of the human mind.
In my early years in graduate school, I had the great fortune of
encountering people whose demeanor,
whose personal presence was really positive.
They were kind, warm-hearted people
who I really wanted to be around more.
And I wanted to discover what their secret sauce was.
I discovered that they all had an interest in the practice of meditation
and that’s really what initiated my quest.
After my second year of graduate school at Harvard in the mid-1970s,
I went off to Asia for the first time to India and to Sri Lanka
to get a little personal taste of these practices.
I came back with a conviction that this was something really important
for psychology and for neuroscience.
I knew that in some way,
my life had really been irrevocably touched at that time.
(in Tibetan)
(traffic noise)
In 1992 I was actually invited by His Holiness the Dalai Lama
to come to Dharamsala to meet with him and to begin a serious dialogue
about the possibility of using modern neuroscientific methods
to investigate the minds and the brains
of Tibetan practitioners who spent years training their mind.
And it was a seminal experience for me.
He challenged me on that day,
he said: “You’ve been using tools of modern neuroscience
"to study anxiety, fear,
"and stress, and adversity,
"why can’t you use those same tools to study kindness and compassion?”
It was a wake-up call
and I made a commitment to him on that day in 1992
that we were going to reorient our work more toward...
the positive end of the human spectrum
and to begin to investigate more seriously
the impact of contemplative practices.
I first met Matthieu Ricard at a Mind & Life meeting
in Dharamsala, India, in 2000.
So we’ve known each other now for almost two decades.
It was very clear to me when we first met
that he was going to be playing a very important role in this quite...
unusual and never-before-attempted cross-cultural dialogue.
So, you know, some people were surprised
I left a scientific career to go study with Tibetan Masters.
But what is science about?
Science is about discovering reality as it is.
Not just following appearances but seeing how things work.
Discovering new things.
So the field of science is usually physical phenomena, biology, life,
now a little bit more psychology
which is a bit more going into other insights.
But Buddhism is a science of mind.
For the last 2500 years we have said it’s a precursor of psychology.
Not only knowing how the mind works
but knowing the laws of happiness and suffering,
the mechanisms of happiness and suffering.
When I travelled to India to meet those teachers,
I was doing my PhD so I went back and forth every summer.
And after six years, I figured out that
this is really the way of life I wanted to explore further.
Basically for twenty-five years, I was completely out of Western life.
Life in a monastery is intense and based on a rigorous academic schedule.
The day begins at 4:30 am
and ends around 1 am, sometimes later.
(monks debating)
Monasteries teach the Five Major sciences,
also known as superior sciences.
They are similar to what we know as neurobiology, psychology
and quantum physics.
They will also teach minor sciences such as art, sculpture and poetry.
Tibetan monks and nuns will first memorize the content
to analyse the texts logically and fully understand their meaning.
Masters will help students to comprehend the deeper meaning of the Teachings
through texts and debate sessions.
As classes progress, exams become more frequent and more difficult.
For every 100 students who enroll,
only 30 to 40 of them will eventually complete their studies
and take on the task of teaching.
This will take them about 20 years.
Then there was the Mind & Life which I joined in 2000,
it was on Destructive Emotions
and there was Francisco Varela, Richard Davidson, Paul Eckman,
and many other luminaries.
And halfway through the week, the Dalai Lama said:
“It’s all fine but what can we contribute to society?”
And the idea came:
let’s take the best neuroscientists and specialists of emotions
and let’s get long-term meditators
who have done 10 to 50 000 hours of meditation
to study the effect of mind training on the brain.
So then I volunteered, being an ex-scientist.
I also recruited,
convinced many of my friends, meditators, Bhutanese, Tibetans,
Westerners, monks and lay people
who had done a lot of meditation practice.
I went to Francisco Varela’s lab but he died very soon after.
I went to Paul Eckman’s lab a few times
in Berkeley, San Francisco and UCSF.
But the main collaboration turned out to be with Richard Davidson.
In 2006, Time Magazine announced Dr. Richard Davidson
as one of the 100 most influential people in the world
for the experiments he carried out with the expert Tibetan meditators,
which led to unprecedented discoveries of the human mind.
When we talk about the effects of meditation on the body,
or for that matter, the effects of meditation on anything,
we need to first indicate
what kind of meditation we’re talking about.
There are literally hundreds of different kinds of meditation.
We have a very broad
and deep program of research
on many different aspects of meditation.
And we study people at the beginning stages of practice,
we study longer term practitioners.
And we also make a very important distinction
between the changes that might occur when you are meditating,
when you’ve got your butt on a cushion or on a chair
and you’re actually meditating,
compared to the changes that occur after or that are more enduring.
Because we’re interested in how meditation can impact
every nook and cranny of your everyday life,
every aspect of your everyday life.
And the way we study that
is to look at the more enduring changes, what we call “trait” changes.
It would require that we specify what kind of meditation it is,
how long a person has been meditating
and whether we’re talking about “state” or “trait” changes.
(intense ambient music)
In Tibetan Buddhism, in order to increase our inner skills,
we’re required to practice using two main tools:
the first is meditation for concentration,
also known as shiné practice.
The second is analytical meditation, also known as Vipassana practice.
To practice meditation for concentration,
what today might be known as Mindfullness,
we begin by concentrating on our breath.
It is easiest to concentrate on our breath
because our mind naturally moves.
But to focus properly,
we must train ourselves to visualize a fixed object.
This practice is what supports the ability of analysis.
Analytical meditation is what enables us to realize
interdependence and compassion,
which are the fundamentals of well-being.
Interdependence means that nothing exists on its own
or independently.
One of Buddha's first teachings
and a recent discovery in Quantum Physics.
Therefore analytical meditation is the most important form of meditation.
The combination of these two practices, concentration and analysis,
is what allows us to achieve the skill of well-being.
One of the things
that viewers will recognize if they try this,
if they try to pay attention to their breathing for example,
is that their mind will wander, thoughts will occur,
distractions happen,
this is the nature of our mind.
And so being able to recognize when that happens
and gently bring the mind back to the object of the practice
is the monitoring function.
With simple mindfulness practices, one of the components of our minds
that are impacted quite clearly is attention,
and there are different aspects of attention that may be impacted.
Mindfulness is a word which is bandied about a lot
in the media these days.
Of course it also has historical roots
in the Buddhist tradition.
It has been co-opted, I would say, by psychologists
in the modern era and further...
described and distorted, I think,
by popular media.
We and other scientists have found that if we’re talking about
simple mindfulness practices, that there are certain...
aspects of our biology that are relevant to health which are impacted,
including improvements in certain aspects of immune function,
decreases in stress hormones
and changes in the autonomic nervous system,
which is part of the system
that responds in a fight or flight situation,
where there is stress or fear that is activated.
The autonomic nervous system regulates those bodily functions
we do not consciously activate,
such as our heart rate, our respiration or digestion.
On a biological level, we are still primitive:
when we are afraid or if we feel at risk,
our body believes our negative emotions are caused by an external danger.
Once our emotions are triggered, the amygdala alerts the hypothalamus,
which will then produce stress hormones that pause our functions
while increasing the level of sugar and fat in our blood
and generating the energy to run away.
The problem is that living under stress all the time
also increases the chances of physical diseases.
Meditation has been shown to be capable of reducing the amygdala’s activity,
enabling a greater control of fear
and a reduction in the brain’s response to it.
And we can see improvements after just a few weeks of training.
The Mind & Life Summer Research Institute (SRI) is now in its 16th year.
It is a week-long immersive residential program
held annually at Garrison Institute in New York.
So we’re in for a real treat.
Tania’s been working on a really significant study
for a number of years and it has just come to fruition.
I hope you’re here to share some of that. So welcome, Tania Singer.
So the first time I encountered Mind & Life,
actually it was when I was in Dharamsala
and the Mind & Life conference had just ended.
It was on plasticity and I was so amazed to hear from a monk
that neuroscientists had just met with the Dalai Lama and monks
to discuss neuroplasticity, because that was my field.
I wrote to Richie Davidson, who was on the Board of Mind & Life,
and I said: “I want to suggest a conference on compassion,
neuroscience and empathy”,
because I was just doing research in London and it was very fresh.
And it was the first time we investigated empathy in the brain.
Immediately he wrote me back. He said: “I’m in London, can I meet you?”
So we met and we became friends immediately.
And so since then, I was basically also working with Matthieu Ricard for years.
We were putting him in the scanner,
asking him to go in different states of empathy, compassion,
loving-kindness and so on and we studied his brain
while he was producing these meditative states,
and we learned from that.
In the work we were doing with Richie Davidson and Tania Singer
at the Max Planck Institute of Leipzig,
we could, through interacting, make a clear difference
between empathy and compassion.
Through the dialogue, something new comes out.
For example, with Matthieu Ricard I was doing empathy research
in putting people into pain, giving pain in the scanner
and then measuring the brain networks which light up
when you have pain or when you empathize with the pain of others,
when you share the pain.
I thought at that time, empathy and compassion was the same thing:
a response whenever you see someone suffering.
And he went into the scanner and I said:
"Can you please just do compassion meditation?"
and I saw in his brain
networks lighting up were actually networks
which come with positive feeling, reward,
you know, feeling of love and warmth.
So I was looking at this and I was like: "How?"
"What is he doing? He’s not suffering with the other."
So I asked him, I said: “Matthieu,
"you know I asked you to empathize with the other
"so you should imagine someone suffering and really suffer with this person.”
And he said: “No, you asked me to go in compassion.”
And I said: “Yeah but same same, no?”
And he said: “No, not at all!”
Then he came out of the scanner and we talked.
If you put someone in an MRI and see what happens in the brain,
unless you can have a very detailed,
insightful description of what this person has been doing,
thinking, feeling,
what type of mind training or meditation that person is doing, he or she is doing,
then you have no clue what's going on in the experience.
So in a way,
that collaboration is very fruitful.
Now it’s increasingly appreciated and recognized by the scientist,
it’s a true collaboration.
It’s not just meditators going in the fMRI,
being put electrodes and being like guinea pigs.
They are completely part of the process
of establishing a research protocol,
interpreting the results and the data.
So they are true collaborators.
He said compassion is a state
where you don’t necessarily have to suffer with the other
but you develop this feeling of concern, warmth
and a strong motivation to help the other.
So I said: “Oh really?"
"This is amazing. This is why we see these networks light up,
"the ones you would see in the brain if a mother sees a picture of a child.
"This kind of warm, loving feeling.”
And so I asked him to go back in the scanner and said:
“OK now Matthieu, you only do empathy,
"you suffer with the other, you don’t go in compassion,
"you don’t transform it in compassion,
"you don’t do what you usually do in meditation.
"You just resonate with the suffering and be empathic.”
And he said: “Ok, why should I do it?” I said: “For science! You know?”
Can you do just empathy? Suffering with the suffering, and I tried
and within half an hour I was completely burnt out.
Then I shift back to compassion
and everything disappeared, the burnout completely disappeared.
Compassion is a strong feeling of concern
towards people who are suffering and a desire to help them.
A person who feels compassion is not distressed
or overwhelmed by the negative emotions of others.
We can all train ourselves to feel compassion
through analytical meditation.
Many people say that we need to grow more, become more empathic.
But what happens
if you are a caregiver and you effectively resonate
with people who suffer, all the time,
then you burn out, you get emotional distress.
So,
then we realized that in the brain,
meditators who engage in compassion do something very different.
It’s a very wholesome feeling, very warm-hearted feeling.
There’s no distress at all.
And we found that the loving kindness meditation
actually is an antidote to empathic distress.
We can now offer compassion training
for doctors, caregivers, social workers,
who burn out and don’t know why.
And then we really understood that basically just empathy alone,
if you don’t transform it into compassion,
can burn you out and can bring you into empathic distress,
which probably happens a lot with nurses or every caregiver,
or, you know, people who need to be in wars or in areas of crisis.
Scientific research
is very, very essential
for the future of the world.
So far,
the scientific research and scientific fields
are mainly external things.
Even those specialists about the brain,
their knowledge about system of emotions,
system of the mind, is very limited.
So the modern science now
should expand.
Not only external things,
but also internal, our mind, our emotions, these things.
(emotional music)
In Buddhism there is the notion of transformation,
the possibility of transforming our mind.
Neuroplasticity is a word that we use to refer to the fact
that the brain changes
in response to experience and in response to training.
Most of the time our brain is being shaped by forces around us
about which we have little access and little control.
We can actually cultivate healthy habits of mind
which will change brain function and structure
in ways that will support those qualities.
The scientific findings show
more anger, constant anger, fear
are very bad for our health.
And obviously we can see
at the level of family,
with more anger, more jealousy, more distress,
that family will never be a happy family.
So in order to develop a healthy body and a long life,
people exercise and do yoga exercise like that.
They extensively carry out some physical exercise
but are full of worry here.
So emotion is a key factor
for a healthy body,
a long life.
(funky music)
Our work collectively has led us to a very, very simple
but we think radical, conclusion.
And that is that well-being is a skill.
We normally don’t think of well-being as a skill
but what we would argue is that well-being
is no different fundamentally
than learning how to play a violin
or learning to play sports.
If you practice at it, you will get better.
(funky music)
The Master is a fundamental figure, a person of experience.
An important aspect of Buddhism states that the teachings of Buddha
have been created to adjust to the learning abilities of the listener.
One student might understand a concept through a different type of explanation
compared to another student.
The greatness of a Master lies in the ability to understand
which teaching will be the most beneficial for the students
all while improving the individual skills of everyone of them.
So when we speak of meditation...
Actually the better expression is “mind training”.
Meditation is about training the mind
to be more attentive, to be more...
benevolent, to be more compassionate, to be more at peace, to be more free.
It’s not just sitting there and emptying your mind, that doesn’t go anywhere.
Now everybody recognizes
that it’s eminently good for mental health and physical health
to do five times 20 minutes of physical exercise every week.
It’s even an antidote for depression.
Now imagine that twenty minutes
of loving kindness meditation
changes the 23 hours and 10 minutes of the rest of the day,
including your sleep,
including your quality of relationships with people at work and your family,
which are the main factors actually for well-being,
the quality of human relations.
So, who would not go for that?
If we really want to know more about effects of meditation,
you'll have to ask: “Which meditation?”
So it really depends which practice, which mental practice, you do every day,
which effect you will see.
So there is nothing like “the meditation practice”,
there is a family of a lot of different meditation practices.
And some are, you know, targeting more opening the heart.
Others are targeting stabilizing your mind and attention.
Others are more reflective. Others are more inter-subjective.
And so depending on which practice you engage in,
you will have very different effects in the brain,
even on the level of body and subjective experience.
Now we see, there are a lot of problems on this planet.
All these problems are related with destructive emotions.
Anger, fear, distress.
These are related with a self-centered attitude,
"Me! Me! Me!"
and create the strong feeling of “we” and “they”.
“More suffering on them!”
Sometimes we feel happy.
So now this attitude must change.
I was impressed from the very beginning
when I went there to the conference in Dharamsala and so on,
is the level of scientific-minded discourse
these monks and His Holiness the Dalai Lama have.
They are really interested and know a lot about Western science,
much more than we know about Buddhist philosophy.
They are very, very sharp minds.
So they are very logical and in a way, very scientifically minded.
They learn how to debate and how to use the logic.
So the questions sometimes are sharp like knives and they really...
You know,
it’s different than being on the normal neuroscientific, psychological conference
where you talk and debate about “P values” and little data things.
In these dialogues with the Dalai Lama,
you really debate the fundaments of science.
“Why do you do that?” “Why do you assume that and that
in your scientific world?”
You get kind of more aware of the edges of your belief system in science,
and you also get aware that our scientific system
is a belief system, not just...
objective, pure, reality, you know?
Which is also just based on a lot of assumptions and axiomatic.
These dialogues are really fruitful to see that,
to become more aware of your limit.
(funky music)
Robert Thurman teaches at Columbia University
and is one of the world leading experts of Tibetan studies.
A student himself, Thurman has worked alongside the Dalai Lama for years.
The findings of leading scientist Amishi Jha
have shown that mindfulness training improves numerous aspects
of both cognitive and emotional health.
We came together in a way where we were
really teasing apart issues
and exploring different ways of knowing that were,
in a very refreshing way...
not familiar but...
it just sort of opened up the mind.
(funky music)
(in Tibetan)
OK, ready?
One, two, three.
Thank you.
- Good morning everybody. - Good morning Your Holiness.
Good sleep?
Good. How many hours?
Good morning everybody.
Good morning Your Holiness.
I’m Susan Bauer-Wu, President of the Mind & Life Institute
and it is my great honor to welcome each of you here
for the 33rd Mind & Life Dialogue.
And we are most privileged to meet here in this extraordinary setting.
And while educational systems have long prioritized the education of mind
as a pathway to a productive adulthood, a material success,
within this room are pioneers in the field,
who are poised to share their latest findings
and their insights with us.
So it’s truly a privilege to be here and to reimagine with all of you
how we can educate not only the mind but the heart,
in pursuit of a kinder, more compassionate and peaceful world.
It raises the fundamental question of the relationship
between brain and mind.
So without brain activation,
there couldn’t be emotion regulation as well.
- Would that be the case? - Yes.
Yes. So...
Emotion regulation, the way a neuroscientist would...
Through some surgery of brain,
can you really remove some emotion?
You can affect an emotion but I wouldn’t say remove an emotion.
Of course our daily experience is:
at a physical level,
it's completely calm,
just a thought comes,
and during that thought, some change happens.
So, the brain activity change comes first?
Or the thought comes first?
There is research that suggests that...
Most neuroscientists would say
that the brain activity and the thought co-occur.
(in Tibetan)
(all laughing)
(in Tibetan)
This sounds a little bit like, you know, someone patching up as you go.
(all laughing)
You know Your Holiness, I often say
to my neuroscience colleagues,
there is what we call the “hard problem” in neuroscience
which you, Your Holiness, frequently come back to,
which is the problem of the relation between the mind and the brain.
And most neuroscientists, the vast majority,
dismiss it.
So you asked about surgery for the brain before.
This man was the director of the National Institute of Mental Health
in the United States for 13 years.
He was responsible over those 13 years for a budget of 20 billion dollars
where he supported research.
And what he said is:
"I don't think we moved the needle in reducing suicide,
"reducing hospitalizations,
"improving recovery for tens of millions of people
"who have mental illness.”
And he said: “I hold myself accountable for that.”
This is...
(speaking Tibetan)
And so he has come to the conclusion, Your Holiness,
that the methods for mind training
that are so important in the Buddhist tradition,
that whole family of methods is going to be the solution.
Not surgery and not drugs
because they haven’t impacted this despite spending twenty billion dollars.
(indistinctive chatting)
(emotional music)
Today we will be focused on the topics of attention
and meta-awareness.
When we’re reading a book,
we can be...
attentive to the words and know the words that we’re reading
but our minds could be lost, our minds could be wandering.
This happens, maybe not with Your Holiness
but I can tell you that in the United States...
Same experience!
(all laughing)
Well, there are scientific data showing that
at least in the United States, on average, the average American adult
spends 47 % of his or her waking life
actually not paying attention to what they’re doing.
They’re lost!
Think about it for a moment.
This means that at the age of 50,
we will have spent about 23 years living in autopilot mode,
making unconscious decisions.
So what happens when a judge doesn’t hear 47 %
of what a key witness says during a trial?
Or when a soldier doesn’t listen to 47% of the orders
imparted by his or her superior?
Or when a politician zones out
at a world summit about complex international affairs?
You can see the pattern, right?
Amishi Jha’s labs with athletes, Marines and judges among others
have been extremely significant.
Her mentor was Richie Davidson
and Amishi has been a part of the Mind & Life community
for many years.
Amishi Jha from the University of Miami
will be discussing this
in basic research contexts.
What about Internal Distraction?
(speaking Tibetan)
For example, when someone is in a completely absorbed state of mind,
whatever comes in the face of sensory perceptions,
the person is not paying any attention, he’s just completely focused.
And the point here is that when we’re talking about mental training,
the domain in which mental training occurs
is really at the level of mind and thought,
not at the level of perception.
So this is where I’m very happy to hear your view of that
because that is actually an open question within cognitive psychology.
(indistinctive conversations)
...when an object appears very negative,
actually the 90% of that negativeness is mental projection.
At the heart of the work that we are engaged in
and the direction of the work of Mind & Life,
it’s much more looking at a collective well-being.
How can our work, how can these conversations
across contemplative wisdom traditions and across the sciences
and across sectors of society,
how can they come together
and intersect in a way where we can improve
collective well-being?
So diversity and inclusion is absolutely really important
and we’re not just limiting it to North America and to Europe,
but we’re really interested in expanding contemplative sciences
and the impact of contemplative sciences worldwide.
And so we’re doing more global programs
and for example we have a Research Institute,
the International Research Institute, that’s happening in Japan this year
and we’ll be doing one in South America in 2020.
Our program in Africa last year was really significant.
It was the first program we had ever done in Africa
and it was in partnership with our African colleagues
on a theme called “Ubuntu”.
Ubuntu is an African indigenous wisdom philosophy
that means: “I am because you are. You are because I am.”
(conference room noise)
The Dalai Lama’s first trip to Africa was set to be a historical world event.
External pressures attempted to stop the Mind & Life Dialogues for months.
However the President of Botswana Ian Khama
was determined to keep his commitment.
If you think alike, in this very subtle ways
this brain has become similar,
more similar to your group than a different group.
My name is Uri Hasson and I’m working in neuroscience in Princeton University.
So I think there is something amazing about us as human beings.
How can we cross cultures and communicate with other people we never met before?
So what we try to understand in my research
is what’s going on now in my brain when I’m speaking with you.
And what is happening in your brain now when you listen to me.
Basically we try to see
how information is flowing from one brain to another brain.
We see that during good communication,
your brain as a listener
becomes similar to my brain as a speaker.
The better the coupling
going from auditory areas to how they process words,
sentences, ideas and emotions.
So the more I’m coupled to you, I manage to take
more and more parts of your brain
and make them coupled to my brain responses.
What we see in our study over and over
is that people are similar, you know?
I grew up in Tel-Aviv, I am living in the U.S.
and now I’m speaking with you in Africa, right?
And the reason why we can communicate
is because your brain is similar to my brain.
You’re going to be more coupled to people that think like you
and are in your group.
And now you should ask:
who is making us similar or different?
And then you realize that it is external forces in the society
that try to make us different than the other.
And to investigate who is making us different
or similar to others, is really important.
If I will not have a brain, there is no way for me to talk with you,
or to move or to raise my hand.
So there is a deep connection between the mind and the brain.
But if we think about the statement “I am because we are”,
the “because” is the interaction of my brain with other brains.
So now you can see that the brain is defined by other brains, by other people
and defined by the way they speak,
by the way they act, by the way they think.
So it’s defined by other people’s minds.
So to understand one brain,
you need to understand how it’s connected to other brains and other minds.
So the brain is never by isolation.
The brain takes the shape of the outside.
So now in terms of humanity,
whether we're Asian, European, African,
or Latin American...
we're all human being.
A lot of problems we are facing, we are experiencing,
are due to secondary level of differences,
including different faith,
and different nationality,
different culture.
Since these secondary levels of differences are causing
the conflict,
now the only remedy is that we must go to a basic level,
then we are the same human beings.
In humanities, there are two forces.
One that makes us all similar
and one that makes us:
“my group versus your group”.
And when I’m thinking about the Dalai Lama,
I’m thinking about people like Ghandi
or Nelson Mandela.
They try to bring humanities together
and say we don’t want these boundaries, we are all equal, we are all human.
But always against it there was the force of:
“You're different than me,
therefore you should be treated in a different way."
And I think especially now in these days, when you see what’s happening globally
and you see how again, we’re going to cluster into different groups
and start fighting with each other,
there is a need to establish common ground.
(percussions)
Here they are! The Upper Story crew members.
Reunited in Bangalore, in the south of India,
two intercontinental flights and a domestic flight later
from Milan, New York, London and Delhi.
Accompanying them, the amazing Tenzin and Lobsang.
On their way towards their destination, Mundgod,
they got a flat tyre but... Hey, adventures happen, right?
After three hours of travel,
there is was, right in front of them:
the Drepung Monastery.
One of the three most important monasteries of the Tibetan tradition,
perfectly rebuilt.
Impressive and enormous
and hosting 3,000 monks.
The crew members met up with Karma here, an almost 80-year-old monk
who had been employed at BBC for years,
and who excited by their visit suggested many locations to shoot in.
Among these, the top of a water tank.
They did try to climb to the top but you know,
with no safety rails and heavy gear... not a good idea!
The reason for their trip? A very special program.
(nature sounds - insects, birds, etc)
(in Tibetan)
According to your opinion,
what would you say? Which is the heavier one:
the negative effects or the positive effects of science?
I would argue that it is positive.
Firstly because, as we were talking about,
the intent is good: it is to know more about the world.
The negative of science is that you have to believe in the method of science,
which creates kind of a weird paradox,
because you will have to believe in a system that inherently
is not about belief.
(funky music)
Now, you’re probably wondering:
how did a group of young Westerners get access to a monastic settlement?
The Emory-Tibet Partnership founded in 1998 by the Dalai Lama,
the dean of Emory University at that time Robert Paul,
and Geshe Lobsang Tenzin Negi.
A unique educational endeavor,
it combines the best of the Western and Tibetan Buddhist
scientific traditions
for their mutual enrichment and for the discovery of new knowledge.
The academic and cultural programs that the Emory-Tibet Partnership offers
explore how science and inner values meet
in an effort to address humanity's greatest problems,
on more than a material level.
Here you will find students from economics, philosophy, religion,
science, neurobiology and public health.
(nature sounds - insects, birds, etc)
(indistinctive chatting and laughing)
- Good morning! - Good morning!
(traditional throat singing)
At every step of life
we are dependent on others.
Even the clothes we wear, the breakfast we had today,
the electricity we have here.
Even...
having each other.
We would not have made it so far
if we were just by ourselves,
alone.
So you can see that interdependence
and how others are so crucial for our own,
not just survival but for flourishing and well-being.
Meditation is not just like sitting on a meditation cushion.
You can use that in all aspects of your life.
So that will help with frustration and anger and any negative emotions
that we may experience.
Just being able to call back in your mind
the meditative practices that you’ve learned.
Meditation is a practice that
Buddhists and monastics do for 20, 30, 50 years of their life
and it’s not something that we’re going to get right away.
(funky music)
We’re also in a mind medicine and healing class.
So that’s looking at Tibetan medicine
and comparing it
to more of a neurological Western standpoint in medicine.
Tibetan medicine. So...
That’s really the class that really draws me in.
I’m learning about a whole different system of looking at health
and looking at disease and illness and how to treat it, how to diagnose it,
which is completely different from the West
where yourself and your body are very separate.
So a doctor might treat your body
but you don’t feel like you’re having a real effect on it.
You take the pill that your doctor prescribes and that’s it.
As for me, I think that in the future,
once I go on to medicine
and actually become a doctor,
I think it will definitely give me
a broader view of what health is.
I think in the West we view health as the absence of illness.
So if you’re healthy, it just means you’re not sick.
So it’s always viewed in the light of negativity.
Versus like, I think, Tibetan medicine,
where to be healthy is a constant process.
Your energies, your behavior, your mentality
and your environment.
And everything has to do with how healthy you are.
If there’s something out of balance, that’s how you get sick.
And I really want to bring that into Western medicine
and how I practice and just be very aware and cognizant
that I’m not just treating my patient.
I’m treating how he views the world.
I’m treating his environment
and to treat just his body is doing a disservice to their health.
The Drepung Loseling Center for Meditation and Science
was inaugurated by the Dalai Lama in December 2017.
Today many other Tibetan monasteries
are building their own scientific centers.
I’ve been able to study science and I love science.
Even though I’m not a Science major at school,
it’s still something that I think is important to be educated about.
I’ve really been questioning kind of what I value
and the directions that I want to go into in my life.
I’ve kind of always I guess...
I was really struck by how I’ve made a lot of my decisions in my life
based off of fear.
You know, fear of failure,
fear of doing something and maybe getting hurt
so avoiding it and just so many avenues...
I think here there’s just been a lack of that fear.
I think it’s really great to just be questioning things consistently
and what I want to value and believe as a person.
So, as a Religion and Business major,
I think compassion can help the business world tremendously
because I think so much of business is based on human interactions
and so much of those interactions are often seen as a zero sum game.
I give you something and then if I give it to you,
it’s no longer mine.
And I think that this concept of just mutual sharing
is so important for all human interactions
and could really help the business world.
One institution like Emory University,
is a well-known, respected, education institution.
Now since, I think, more than 10, 15, 20 years,
we developed some sort of mutual work.
I really feel gratitude
that such a wonderful, great institution really pay attention
and make certain significant contributions regarding this field.
(funky music)
We need to create a culture
where people are more attuned to their own feelings,
better able to control their impulses.
Human well-being depends also
on our emotional states, emotional well-being.
(percussions)
Bringing modern science in the monasteries, it’s not just
to inform the monastics about the science and technology.
Of course that’s an important part.
The monastics need to be 21st Century monastics,
aware of what’s happening out in the world.
But there is a deeper purpose
for the inclusion of modern science in the monastic curriculum
and they understand the scientific framework,
scientific language, scientific tradition and methodologies.
They will participate
with the scientists on equal footing,
in collaborating in various research
and developing the understanding of inner dimensions.
But this is a very monumental kind of...
change in this 600-year-old monastic learning.
I have heard many things about Emory University
from the professors who usually come to teach in India
for the monks and nuns for several years.
I have been in Emory University
for more than eight months.
I was one of the two nuns
who was chosen as a Tenzin Gyatso Science Scholarship.
I know that there are
some supporters,
and some professors who are really working hard
to get nuns to be part of this project.
(classroom noise)
You've got all of these neurons that are built for growth and change.
It makes them happy, they want to do it.
They want to create these neural networks, right?
Much more than they like things and material possessions.
You get a nice fancy watch, it might be great for a while
but what do we know about your sensory neurons?
What are they going to do?
Habituate to the feel of that watch and pretty soon,
it's just another item that you are not paying attention to.
There's no growth and change in that watch.
And this is why,
If you want life happiness, it's really about growth and change.
(classroom noise)
Before coming here, we were in Dharamsala for a year.
We were preparing to come to Emory University.
So we are here to study science, and when going back to the monastery,
to teach science to the other monastic fellows.
I like psychology class because it shares many things
that are very related to Buddhism.
It talks about emotions, behaviors and ways of thinking.
It's really interesting because it's the same information
and that relates back to perception, so...
I guess we are all looking for something else,
but it's all there available.
What are we going to say if the professor asks?
(funky music)
(nature sounds - insects, birds, etc.)
(in Tibetan)
- You girls are going to eat? - Yes, I'm cooking.
I’m in the second semester and I still have a year to go.
(church bells ringing)
Until now, the six of us we are in the same subjects,
taking the same subjects.
But for the next semester, we will be split off.
So I’m thinking of taking
Physics lecture and Physics lab,
also Biology lecture and Biology lab.
We can also
open our eyes to the Western way of study.
Modern science or ancient science,
those two subjects are bridging together
for one goal
that calls better humanity.
For the last four or five hundred years, with the advent of...
modern science and technology, people somehow
gave...
more of a kind of credence, trust,
to external development.
Because, you know,
when it comes to basic needs
like the food and the medicine and so forth,
those are more material, sensorial resources that we need.
So obviously it makes sense that when people are suffering
with all kinds of illnesses and the lack of food,
when there's not enough food and the population is growing,
that science has provided a tremendous help
in maximizing crops for example,
to the medicines and so forth,
and then improving the living conditions.
I think that for a long time,
the primary focus of the people, the population,
has gone into external development.
And on the other side,
countries like India,
and certainly Tibet...
made the primary focus about inner cultivation
and in such a way,
neglected to a certain extent external development.
The thing is that now is the time
to bring these two together.
One is neither better or worse than the other, we need both.
The Paradox of Happiness or Paradox of Easterlin
was defined by American economist Richard Easterlin in the 1970s.
It states that past a certain level of wealth,
there is no longer a direct correlation between the rise of one’s income
and the rise in personal happiness.
This discovery challenges consumer culture
and the idea that well-being can be reached
through the possession of things.
One important thing is the education system.
I have a very very critical view
of existing so-called modern education.
It is very much oriented about material value.
So people
who come through that kind of education,
they only think about material value.
Now it is very clear that generations
who come through that kind of education,
eventually you see, create a more materialistic life.
Now today’s world is like that.
Materialistic culture.
So,
in the material field,
there's competition.
And exploitation,
cheating,
in order to gain more
profit.
We are social animals.
Individual happiness, individual success,
even individual survival, depends on the rest of the community.
So if one individual remains distant from the community
with suspicion, with jealousy,
with extreme competitive feelings,
then that individual
cannot be a happy one.
Because the individual’s future depends on the community.
The community is the basis of our happy life.
So compassion brings together.
Anger and jealousy make distance.
These are basic human values,
irrespective of whether believer or non-believer.
These are basic human values.
One of the strongest instincts that social animals have
is the sympathy, this capacity to “feel for”.
And in the species where you find
the sympathy shared in more of the members of a group,
those species flourish.
Where it is missing, those species perish.
All human activities,
the prime mover is our emotions.
So we are dealing with emotions.
Once our emotions are more...
More positive, more reasonable, more constructive,
then every one of our actions becomes constructive.
Including economy. Everything.
If our emotions, motivations,
have too much self-centered attitude or are too oriented about money or power,
then even religion also becomes dirty.
Now usually people call “dirty politics”,
but politics itself is nothing.
It depends on the politicians.
Those who use politics more honestly,
more truthfully, with moral principles, make good politics.
Too much narrow-minded, self-centered attitudes, cheating other people,
bullying other people, make dirty politics.
So we are dealing with the motivation level.
So the thing is
that we are facing many challenges.
Short-term of the economy, mid-term of quality of life,
social justice, inequalities and long-term of the environment.
Ok? So we need one concept to work together.
I think we can say reasonably most people want a better world.
Except a few crazy maniacs.
So we need to work together.
Scientists of the environment should be able to talk to financiers
and politicians.
They work on a different timescales, so it’s like a...
schizophrenic dialogue because one speaks about a hundred years,
one speaks about the end of the year profit
and one speaks of re-election in five years.
So they don’t speak of this. We need a unifying concept.
Everybody can work together for a better world.
Selfishness will not do the job.
If you are selfish you don’t care about future generations,
you don’t care for the poor in the midst of plenty,
you don’t care about anything except yourself.
Now the only concept that helps to bring those things together,
three timescales - short-term, mid-term, long-term -
is having more consideration for others. Altruism.
We know from neuroscience
that there are sensitive periods in brain development
between the ages of roughly four and seven years
during which the brain is more plastic, more receptive to input,
more amenable to change.
And if we can change the brain at these early ages,
we can set kids up for a more positive developmental trajectory.
All of our work,
as we’re looking at collective well-being,
it is something that we’re not...
you can’t easily and quickly just measure it.
It’s the long-term vision.
And so an example of that is with social and emotional learning
and bringing in secular ethics, bringing in compassion,
compassion into the education of our youth.
We’re not going to see the results of that tomorrow,
but we know it’s the right thing.
It’s to begin to...
shine the light on how we can begin to...
transform individuals,
transform institutions, transform systems
and minimize the suffering in the world.
We human beings, this brain is something very special brain.
So now, this brain
can see more holistic.
Short-term interest and long-term interest.
If we want a happier world,
a peaceful century,
then we must look at our emotions.
Positive emotions, constructive emotions.
Destructive emotions.
I think the biggest learning experience is people that you interact with,
that you at first may think: “This person is so different from me.”
You can really connect with anyone.
When you really
you know, become aware.
It’s a personal awareness.
Why should I stay backward instead of going forward?
We all have the same basic nature of our mind.
As human beings we actually do have the power to be able to shift
our thoughts.
You have the ability to change
your environment, your health and those around you.
Really get at the core principles of love
and kind of just decreasing the ego.
Now what we need is more compassion, more cooperation,
more caring.
Global cooperation is not just some “va-va” term
but it’s actually a necessity for the planet to survive.
If we really make an effort
with vision,
we can change.
SUBTITLING: WHAT'SUB