New Findings on Loving Kindness Meditation

Benefits of meditation have often been reported, see e.g. Meditation increases grey matter in right hemisphere of the brain.

Benefits range from concentration, stress reduction, to increases in the brain's grey matter.

These results have been associated mostly with Vipassana or mindfulness meditation.

For Metta Bhavana (Loving Kindness Meditation) no such study has been made until recently, a group of neuro-scientists wrote a paper " Regulation of the Neural Circuitry of Emotion by Compassion Meditation: Effects of Meditative Expertise"

They used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) techniques to show increase activity in insula due to meditation training.

The result was also reported in the Scientific American article "Meditate on This: You Can Learn to Be More Compassionate"

It indicates that it might be possible for compassion and loving-kindness to be learned. Buddhists have always believe that we can develop our mental faculties, including compassion, like we build our muscles.

Metta Bhavana is one of the cornerstones of Buddhist meditation, in the Theravada and the Mahayana traditions. It complements Samatha and Vipassana meditation. Samatha aims at tranquility and leads to Jhanas, Vipassana leads to Insight and Purification. Metta Bhavana tenderizes the heart and develops good-will, it can be practiced separately or together with the other types of meditation. Many schools teach all three types of meditation.

Some Guided Metta meditation tapes:

• Loving-kindness Meditation - Ven. Pannyavaro: loving1.mp3 714 KB Instruction, loving2.mp3 482 KB A Guided Meditation

• Guided Meditations with Malcolm Huxter: [31,293 KB] Guided Loving-kindness Meditation
  

• Gil Fronsdal Guided Meta Meditation

• Meta Meditation by Thubten Chodron in rm format

Related: When we wish happiness for all.....

Barendregt's Cover-Up Model of the Mind

Henk Barendregt (homepage ) is widely known for his work in Lambda Calculus and Type Theory, less known is his writings on Insight Meditation.

He used reflection without interference to observe his own mind, and the Cover-Up Model is the outcome of such experience. Reflection without interference is practiced in Insight or Vipassana Meditation.

He discovered three important characteristics of the Mind confirming what others have also experienced:

1. it is constantly fluctuating
2. it is unbearable
3. it is not under our control

Buddhists recognize these as the three characteristics of all things. The first is impermanence (anicca). The second is dukkha (sometimes is translated as suffering), which Barendregt prefers to think as akin to the emptiness of extentialism or nausea. The third states that the mind is not under our control, in fact there is no central control as in the Cartesian doctrine. Since self is the illusion of such central control, the third characteristic is usually called anatta no-self.

The Cover-Up model says that we will always try to avoid the nausea by covering it up. Cover-up can take the form of feelings and thoughts: positive thinking, pleasure seeking, distractions (talking, watching TV, eating, etc), mysticism and many others. Meditation which only makes us relaxed or happy but does not lead insight is also a form of Cover-Up.

Cover-up does not handle the nausea directly, it just makes it less visible (for a while). The nausea appears hidden when we cover-up, we become ignorant of it.
However Cover-Up does not last forever, and we will have to constantly make ourselves busy to do it.
The analogue is when we sit for a long time, and feel uncomfortable, we change our posture, until we feel uncomfortable again.
In contrast to Cover-up, the real way to cope with nausea directly is the path of purification through mindfulness. There is a nice picture of this practice in a poster by Barendregt.

The explanation of why mindfulness works leads us to the Abhidhamma model
of the ancient Buddhist tradition (Tipitaka). According to the Abhidhamma, the stream of consciousness is discrete, basically serial but with parallel sub-branches.

Barendregt claims that the Cover-up model can be translated in terms of the Abhidhamma model.

Links:

• The cover-up model of the mind (revision 2, influenced by Abhidhamma) Utrecht, 25.09.2004.
• The cover-up model of the mind (revision 1) Stirling, 11.06.2004.
• The cover-up model of the mind Based on trained experimental phenomenology
• The Abhidhamma Model of the Mind Utrecht, 30.09.2006.
• Reflection and its use: from Science to Meditation
• The Ancient Theory of Mind Lecture at Harvard (October 2001)
• Mind-Brain-Mindfulness

The Art of Making Our Lives Difficult

Does Tao mean going with the flow, while Buddhist practices often are practices of making our live difficult? We examine by comparing Taoism and Buddhism.

The Chinese are often considered incomprehensible because they have a triad of beliefs, they have three 'religions': Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. The three have a lot in common, and sometimes they complement each other, but at times they contradict each other.
How can one have beliefs which are (partially) contradictory. Either the Chinese are illogical, or they tolerate a greater amount of inconsistency than the average people. Actually everybody have inconsistencies, and it is not always bad to be inconsistent.

I am not going to go into a general discussion of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism here.
But just for a summary, Confucianism believes in order and rationality in society. Order (and discipline and some rituals) is necessary, children must learn it. But order can become outdated, and leads to conservatism. Worse, rituals are often observed just for rituals sake.

Taoism's keyword is harmony with nature. It is also order, but it believes in the natural flow of things. Order comes from spontaneous action.

Buddhism brings a new element, dukkha, which means that nature is basically chaotic, and we need to practice control of chaos.
Out of the three characteristics in Buddhism, change, no-self, and incompleteness, Taoism shares the first two but not the third. On no-self, Taoism believes that self is a product of our thinking, and like Zen, it considers thinking as a hindrance.

In analogy, the difference between Confucianism and Taoism on the one side and Buddhism on the other is like classical, non-chaotic physics and modern physics or chaotic world models. Buddhism recognizes dukkha as fundamental in nature, manifesting itself as suffering, dissatisfaction, Gödel's incompleteness in logic , Heisenberg uncertainty principle, and in mathematical chaos.

This difference between Taoism and Buddhism, the first maintaining that nature is in harmony, and the second that nature is basically chaotic, is crucial.
If nature is in harmony, we don't need to do anything except to be in harmony with nature, to know the flow and just follow it effortlessly.
Elaborate practices causing suffering are just arts of making our lives difficult.

If nature is basically chaotic, we have to exert ourselves to control the chaos through mindfulness. Buddhism believes that the mind is very (infinitely?) malleable, it can be trained e.g. in the five faculties, just like we train our muscles. (Please note the word "control" is not meant as in controlling a machine, subjecting it to our will, but control through mindfulness).
Part of the practice may involve suffering, but this is necessary because suffering is one of the three characteristics of being. Experience is all important in Buddhism, it is the way to know something, including the experience of suffering.
If one day, scientists should developed an enlightenment pill, it would not be very useful, because the process of getting there is more important than the result.
In Buddhism "mind harbors all", Taoism does not have the equivalent of mindfulness.

Finally, I am not suggesting that Confucianism and Taoism are not valuable. The Confucian values for society has played an important role in the economic development of many East Asian countries, and Taoist concept of harmony is what is needed in ecology, for example. Order is mostly good, as in Gtd.

Note: I borrowed the title "The Art of Making Our Lives Difficult" from Theo Fischer's book: "Yu wei. Die Kunst, sich das Leben schwer zu machen"
but the opinions expressed here are different from the book's.

Related:

• The Sayings of Lao Tzu by Lionel Giles
• Taoism, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• I-Kuan Tao
• Samsara Divided by Zero by Thanissaro Bhikkhu (about Chaos and Buddhism)
  

My Favorite Mental Fitness Exercises

As the year draws to a close, I thought Mental Fitness would be a good topic.
Many people lost their mental capabilities as they aged. This is however is not inevitable, it is simply as people say, "use it or lose it".
As in the case of muscle atrophy, loss of brain capacity is often caused by disuse.
Recent medical research indicates that people with inactive minds are more prone to contracting devastating brain diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

The other reason for bringing up this topic, is because it is one of the hacks to be included in the list for LifeHack 2.0, see Life Hack 2.0 How-to's

There are many ways for mental exercise, books, articles, seminars, and training centers abound.

These exercises range from cross word puzzles, Sudoku, memorizing phone numbers to visualization, meditation, and Yoga.

Here are some of my favorite mental exercises:

• I have never learned music, but I find memorizing and playing melodies on keyboard very useful. It combines tactile and brain memories, and can at the same time express feelings.

• Recently I received a DVD gift, titled "Wu Dang Qi Gong" and I started to learn and practice the graceful movements. Of course I am not suggesting that Qi Gong is only for mental exercises, but it has a very beneficial side effect. Memorizing movements and bodily coordination, together with posture, balancing and peace of mind is priceless.

• I tried some Origami when I was a kid, now looking at some of the Origami sites on the net, I am surprised to see so many beautiful things one can create from paper. Learning to fold is a rewarding practice involving spatial memory.
  

• Another of my favorite memorizing exercises is to recite poems or suttas for Buddhist. One popular such is the Karaniya Metta Sutta, or The Hymn of Universal Love. You can memorize in English or Pali. It is not too short and not too long (see Karaniya Metta Sutta The Buddha's Words on Loving-kindness )
  

• Meditation has a special place for keeping the brain sharp. Apart from concentration, it helps us to be mindful, and to be alert and relaxed at the same time.

Other exercises may include Writing/blogging, Chess and other games, Sharing good stories, jokes, Discussions, Listening to lectures and podcasts, Reading books, Teaching, and Learning new things.

Finally, although not a mental exercise, physical exercise, good nutrition, and good sleep have effects on the mental faculty.

Happy New Year 2008!

LifeHack, GTD, ZTD and Friends

What is LifeHack, GTD, ZTD, and LifeHack 2.0?

LifeHack 1.0 is productivity tips to cut through information overload, and generally to get better organized. It was extracted from highly efficient IT people, similar to Steven Covey's "The 7 Habits of Highly Efficient People" for the general case.

For example the book "LifeHacker: 88 Tech Tricks to Turbocharge Your Day"
includes hacks such as emailing your future self (reminders), installing a personal Wiki, avoiding time wasting sites, automate repetitive tasks, control email, keep the Inbox empty, Google searching, firewalls, backups, etc.

GTD (Getting-Things-Done) is a set of tools (manual or electronic) to externalize our to-do lists, so that we need not keep them in our heads, and thus reduce stress. GTD can be seen as a glorified to-do-list, it includes calendars, workflows, 6 levels of focus and planning.

ZTD (Zen-To-Done) is a book by Leo Babauta: "Zen To Done: The Ultimate Simple Productivity System" , which claims to have combined GTD with Stephen Covey 7 Habits. ZTD focuses on developing 10 habits.

LifeHack 2.0 is a term I coined for the extension of LifeHack 1.0 to non IT subjects such as creativity, happiness, procrastination, writing and presentation skills, negotiation, investing, relaxation, mindfulness, exercise, sleep, eating habits, and giving gifts. These are some of topics you can find at LifeHack.org.

I am trying to compile LifeHack 2.0 hacks, some of these have appeared on this blog already. Hacks should be action oriented, and not domain specific. They can be inspired by philosophies and spiritual traditions, but should be acceptable to people from various beliefs.

LifeHack 2.0 Examples:

• Slowing down, take time to smell the flowers, relax
  

• To see the extra-ordinary in ordinary things

• Do simple ordinary things such as dish washing, sweeping the floor, gardening

• Less Multi-tasking, more focus on here and now
  

• Bare Attention Suspend judgment once in a while

• Clear Comprehension of Purpose
  

• Mindfulness, using every day events for reminders to be mindful (Thich Nhat Hanh suggested every time when a phone rings, to compose ourselves, before picking up the phone)

• Mindfulness of bad habits to break them

• Refactoring and re-purposing, get the task completed first and improve by refactoring (as in extreme programming). Re-use by re-purposing
  

• Continuous Learning

• Sub tasking, take one bite at a time

• Systems thinking things are interconnected. Thich Nhat Hanh's InterBeing
  

• Nice guys finish first it is always good to be good
  

• Helping others to help ourselves

• Don't use violence

All of the above hacks still need to be reworked, elaborated, or subdivided into smaller hacks.

I would be grateful for comments and suggestions of such LifeHack 2.0 tips from the readers.

Revised version: Life Hack 2.0 How-to's

What Makes Decision Making Hard

We make decisions all the time, some of them we call easy, hard and not so hard. What makes a decision hard?
The following looks at some conditions of a hard decision, and some of the tools available to help us.

Broadly, there are three categories of reasons why decision making can be hard.

Firstly, there is uncertainty.

This includes non-determinism as well as insufficiency of knowledge and information. It also includes complexity of the computing resources to obtain information.
For example, risk of a stock is associated with standard deviation, which is a statistical parameter of a probabilistic variable. However, the standard deviation is only approximated by looking at the historical data of the stock. Data may not be available, and computing resources may limit what can be calculated.
We have already seen this in relation to bounded rationality .
Another aspect of uncertainty is volatility, the uncertainty with respect to changes associated with the passage of time. Historical data may be useless if the system is changing very fast.

Secondly, structural complexity.

Structural complexity refers to the degree of entanglement of the situation. Structural complexity may imply computational complexity as well.
Many cases involve quantitative as well as non-quantitative relations among variables. One variable is likely to influence another, e.g. decrease in one variable will increase the other, but the relation cannot be quantified (see systems thinking and systems dynamics).
The number of variables and the relation and interactions among variables determine structural complexity.
We have seen how in Buddhist Economics , many more considerations such as Ethics and Ecology must be considered in addition to traditional Economics. This increases the structural complexity of the problem.

Finally, conflict.

Conflict refers to conflicting goals, interests and opinions.
Decision making with multiple goals is easy if the different goals can be weighted numerically and thus reduced to a single goal. In general, conflicting goals cannot be so treated.
Conflict can come from internal as well as external sources. It is interesting, that according to Minsky's "society of minds" theory , there are multiple minds inside us, including thinking and emotional minds, beliefs and desires, mostly in conflict with each other.

People found that our decisions are not rational, but instead we make decisions according to which mind happens to be strongest, and afterwards construct narrative rationalizations around them.

The combination of uncertainty, structural complexity and conflict makes decision making hard.
Some tools have been developed to assist us. For example Robert Clemens in his book Making Hard Decisions: An Introduction to Decision Analysis (Business Statistics) listed decision trees, cash flow discounting, probability and statistics, sensitivity analysis, Monte Carlo simulation, and utility theory.
These are useful, but often inadequate.

Systems Dynamics would be good for modeling, if everything is numerical. The system could be run under various what-if settings to produce simulations.
When numerical values are not available, Systems Thinking can be used for modeling. But the model cannot be "executed" by a computer program.
An alternative is FCM (fuzzy cognitive maps ), which uses fuzzy logic to express relations. Fuzzy logic has a natural way of resolving conflicts, allowing various "expert" opinions to be combined.
All three modeling methods have disadvantages. What is needed is perhaps a modeling method where the relations are can be partly numerical, partly fuzzy, and partly qualitative.
The model must be executable, at least for some of the sub-models.
Models must also be decomposable into top-down hierarchies to allow different levels of details.

Higher Order Negativities

The term "Negative Negativities" was, according to Pema Chödrön, used by her spiritual teacher Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, in an article "Working with Negativities" (a chapter of the book The Myth of Freedom). In her interview "Good Medicine for This World", Pema Chödrön told us how reading the article had an important impact on her life.

I have not read Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, so the following is my own interpretation of what I understand from Pema Chödrön.

Negativity in Buddhism is not the same as negative thinking (see e.g. Is positive thinking positive or negative? ). It refers to dukkha (suffering or dissatisfaction) situations, when we are angry, hateful, revengeful, envious, fearful, desirous, lustful, doubtful, in pain, in sorrow, in despair, etc.

For example, you returned to your parked car, and found your favorite new car scratched. You got upset, and that is negativity.

First order and higher order negativities.

If you only got upset, that is first order negativity. But when you start blaming the parking management, or people for not being responsible, or yourself for not being more careful, and so on, then you have higher order negativities.

The Buddha once asked, if you are hit by an arrow, which hurts more, the arrow or your mind?

For most people, the escalation of negativities in their minds is what really hurts.

In modern times, one use the term "damage control", the first order damage is limited, but the higher order damage is limitless.

Negativity as poison used in medicine.

What Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche is saying is that it is alright to have first order negativity, but not alright with negative negativities.

Dukkha is in the nature of all things. Shunryu Suzuki said that it is OK to suffer is.

Instead of developing negative negativities, the original negativity should be look upon as poison used in medicine, it will then be a source of creative energy.

The Night Travelers.

How can we turn negativities to healing? Pema Chödrön's answer is compassion. Start with compassion to oneself, stop blaming oneself, accept oneself unconditionally. Then realize that others are suffering in the same way.

Extend compassion to them, and to all.

Rumi wrote a poem called "Night Travelers," It's about how all the darkness of human beings is a shared thing from the beginning of time, and how understanding that opens up your heart and opens up your world. You begin to think bigger. Rather than depressing you, it makes you feel part of the whole.

Finally practice Tonglen, the art of absorbing other's pain and sending out help and compassion.

A lifelong practice.

Knowing and understanding that negative negativities is bad, is not enough. It must be practiced over and over again with mindfulness. No matter how long we have practiced, we will fail again and again. It is as if we have to be kept honest and humble. Each failure should be seen as a wake-up call. When we meditate on an object such as our breath, we will time and again be distracted by sound, thoughts, feelings, and so on, but is alright as long as we return to the object of meditation as soon as realize the distraction.

Abandon all hopes of fruition.

This may seem strange to most, but if we are really committed to "here and now", we can't allow the future to distract us.

This is consistent with other Eastern wisdom, found in the Bhagavad Gita ( "Since I have no cravings for the fruit of actions, actions do not contaminate Me.") and in the Wu Wei of Taoism.

Related:

• CG Jung and Pema Chödrön
• Solving and outgrowing problems
• Tonglen
• Bhagavad Gita

Psychologist reveals the secrets of leadership

It is not charisma, intelligence, or other personality traits that one must have in order to be a good leader. Research by psychologists at the University of Exeter, University of St Andrews and Australian National University shows that most important is for leaders to be identified as "one of us".

Once they are identified as "one of us", they are in position to shape "what we should do".

The research paper, The New Psychology of Leadership, by Stephen D Reicher, S. Alexander Haslam (Exeter) and Michael J. Platow (ANU) is the cover story of the current edition of Scientific American Mind.

237 Reasons To Have Sex

Research at the University of Texas found that there are 237 reasons people have sex (see: Physorg):

People’s motivations ranged from the mundane (“I was bored”) to the spiritual (“I wanted to feel closer to God”) and from the altruistic (“I wanted the person to feel good about himself/herself”) to the manipulative (“I wanted to get a promotion”).

Some said they had sex to feel powerful, others to debase themselves. Some wanted to impress their friends, others to harm their enemies (“I wanted to break up a rival’s relationship”).

Ability to forget is important

If we can't forget unimportant memories, we can't remember what is really important.

This was concluded by Stanford researchers using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) techniques: "Forgetting Helps You Remember The Important Stuff, Researchers Say"

The reason is not a simple picture of our memory as a limited number pigeon holes, with limited memory capacity. In that case, new items cannot be stored when the memory is full, and therefore necessitates erasing old memory.

The idea of competing memories as in the above competition for slots, is correct, but the mechanisms of processing inputs and rearranging memories is more complicated:
"Any act of remembering re-weights memories, tweaking them to try to be more adaptive for the next time you try to remember something. The brain is plastic—adaptive—and one feature of that is not just strengthening some memories but also suppressing or weakening others."

"Memory allows humans to be predictive about what's likely to be relevant to them as they go through life. What forgetting does is allow the act of prediction to occur much more automatically, because you've gotten rid of competing but irrelevant predictions. That's very beneficial for a neural information processing system."

Solving and outgrowing problems

When the tsunami comes, you run uphill. When you sit in an exam doing algebra or geometry, you have to solve the problem. And when you are faced with an insoluble problem such as aging, death, you outgrow it. These are different ways of tackling problems: running away from it, solving it, or outgrowing it.

Many people, including myself, enjoy solving problems, taking pride in their problem solving skills and tricks arsenal.
Problem solving requires getting a new perspective on the situation, and perhaps expressing creativity to find solutions.
Their attitude is like Kaizen' motto: "Problems are a mountain of treasure". This is a positive attitude in always improving oneself.

When I worked in the field of Artificial Intelligence, problem solving is studied from the point of view of automating it for programs to allow them to solve search, optimization, matching, and other tasks.
At one time it was believed that a "General Problem Solver (GPS)" could be developed for programs to have general intelligence. Later, most retreated from that position, and turned to specific domain problem solving.

An earlier and parallel development was in Logic and Mathematics. Kurt Gödel proved his incompleteness theorem: a logical system is either incomplete or inconsistent. The equivalent Turing theorem is: there are functions that can never be computed by a universal machine.

These results gave constraints on what problem solving can do. Later another practical constraint was discovered. Some problems are definitely solvable, but not in polynomial time in the size of the problem. Large such problems cannot be practically solved.
Hence, people turned to approximate solutions using heuristics problem solving, which aims at getting good results instead of optimal results.

Many years ago, I read "The Secret of the Golden Flower" by Richard Wilhelm, with commentary by C.G. Jung. Jung was the Swiss founder of the Jungian school of analytic psychology. Jung wrote: "I had learned in the meanwhile that the greatest and most important problems of life are all in a certain sense insoluble. They must be so because they express the necessary polarity inherent in every self-regulating systems. They can never be solved, but only outgrown."

I could not at first fully understand the sentence, but the more I read it, the more I was aware of the astonishing insight contained in the writing. Not only did Jung stated the unsolvability, but he gave reasons for it, and showed how one must outgrow fundamental problems.

The reason "They must be so because they express the necessary polarity inherent in every self-regulating systems" sounds very modern. It can be appreciated if we read Fritjof Capra's "The Tao of Physics" and "The Web of Life".
The dynamic, ever-changing equilibrium of the forces of Yin and Yang is the inherent polarity, and self-regulating systems is a precursor of the idea of autopoiesis, the pattern or process of life. Hence the fundamental problems of life are insoluble.

Outgrowing a problem does not mean making the problem disappear, it is still there, but somehow its significance has diminished, mainly because we have changed ourselves.

In normal problem solving, the problem is thought to be there independent of the us, the subject. But in outgrowing problems, we recognize that the problem and the subject are intricately connected.
The analogy is like between classical physics where something is observed objectively, and quantum physics, where any observation by the subject distorts the object of observation.

According to Jung, the key to outgrowing is letting go or letting things happen, or Wu Wei ("non-action"). Jung then continued with the interplay of the conscious and the unconscious, including the collective unconscious, and took us to his theories of psychology.

In Buddhism, "Mind harbours all" said the Dhammapada, therefore all problems are in our minds, created by our minds, and to be outgrown by our minds.
Another Buddhist term often used to describe outgrowing is spaciousness. For example, when meditating, we aim to be as spacious as possible.
Gil Fronsdal, give the following illustration of spaciousness: If we are in a small room, perhaps 2 by 2 meters, and there is nail in the middle of the room, we have a problem of constantly watching not to step on it. If the room is the size of a big hall, the nail is still there, but it has become a minor problem.

In summary, we have problems that we can run away from, problems that can be solved rationally, and problems that need to be outgrown. It is the last category which is most important, because those are the fundamental problems of life.

Some Quotes taken from here:

• "Having a problem is no problem. It's denying you have it that creates the difficulty." - John Cleese

• "There is no problem so big it can't be run away from." - Charles Schultz

• "One of the nice things about problems is that a good many of them do not exist except in our imaginations." - Steve Allen

• "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." - Albert Einstein

Bad news for cancer cure

It is fundamentally impossible to find a final cancer cure, says Norwegian researcher Jarle Breivik.
The reason is based on the idea of the selfish gene and Darwinian evolution. As Dawkins and others have observed, our bodies are just vehicles for the genes to propagate themselves. Evolution is not survival of the fittest of the organisms, but of the genes. After parents have produced children, and they can take care of themselves, the parents are irrelevant and dispensable, form the genes point of view.

The link to cancer is the recognition that cancer is not caused by sunshine, smoke, junk food and other carcinogens - they are only stimulants for producing variants - cancer is basically a genetic disease. It has to do with mistakes in copying and reproducing DNA and the repair mechanism. As we age, evolution will favor cells which break free and behave in in-orderly manners, in other words, cancer cells.

“The better we get at treating cancer, the older we become and the more cancer there will be in the population. Additionally, better therapy for children and young people implies that more cancer genes are passed on to the next generation. From what we know about evolutionary dynamics, I believe it’s impossible to find a therapeutic solution to cancer. The basic problem is that we are trapped in a body that the genes have made to be disposable. A solution will therefore be something much more radical than a new drug,” says Breivik in "No Solution to Cancer."

To illustrate the process, Breivik uses a Grand Prix model (see illustration in the same article, or "Don't stop for repairs in a war zone: Darwinian evolution unites genes and environment in cancer development" ), where there two cars, one green and one red. The green cars always stop at the pitstop whenever some trouble develops, the red car never stops. In a harsh environment, the red car has better probability chances of reaching finish.

At the end of the article, Breivik says that we should rather care for our minds than bodies. In the future, our bodies will be cyborgs.

“It's the mind, our thoughts and consciousness that we desperately want to preserve. If we look at technological developments as a whole, that may be exactly what’s happening. The ongoing revolution in information and biotechnology may be interpreted as the mind’s liberation from the genes. It’s difficult to imagine the alternative, but if I could see a thousand years into the future, I would be very surprised if earth is still dominated by two-legged creatures with a limited life span.”

This is interesting to read in connection with the parallel evolution of the memes, the basis of cultural evolution.

Mirror Neurons Open New Vistas

The discovery of mirror neurons has been hailed as the greatest since the discovery of DNA.
Not only can it explain autism, but it could be the basis of empathy, imitation learning, language evolution, mind reading, and social understanding. It could also be a biological foundation for memes.

It must be said here that some of the above are on firm scientific grounds, but many others are only very interesting speculations at the moment.

Mirror neurons were discovered in the 1980s and 1990s, by Giacomo Rizzolatti working with Leonardo Fogassi and Vittorio Gallese at the university in Parma, Italy.

Briefly stated, mirror neurons ( e.g. Wikipedia and Mirror-Neurons: a primer ) in primates fire when we do something, but also when we watch other do the same actions. This way we can understand the body language of someone. When we are in pain, e.g. we bleed for a cut, we know how it feels. Later when we see someone bleeding from a cut, we understand his or her pain, thus forming the basis of empathy. Of course the pain that we feel, and the pain that someone feels may not be the same, pain is still subjective.

The mirror neurons have sometimes also been called Dalai Lama neurons, providing a biological basis for compassion and loving kindness.

The neurologist Ramachandran puts it this way: "The discovery of mirror neurons in the frontal lobes of monkeys, and their potential relevance to human brain evolution is the single most important "unreported" (or at least, unpublicized) story of the decade. I predict that mirror neurons will do for psychology what DNA did for biology: they will provide a unifying framework and help explain a host of mental abilities that have hitherto remained mysterious and inaccessible to experiments."
( see MIRROR NEURONS and imitation learning as the driving force behind "the great leap forward" in human evolution )


A flood of research activities have developed since the discovery of mirror neurons. One of the first, was the connection to autism. (see "Autism; Autism Linked To Mirror Neuron Dysfunction")


Mind reading.
More speculative are the connections to mind reading, imitation learning and language evolution.
Giacomo Rizzolatti says that the neurons could help explain how and why we "read" other people's minds and feel empathy for them. If watching an action and performing that action can activate the same parts of the brain in monkeys--down to a single neuron--then it makes sense that watching an action and performing an action could also elicit the same feelings in people.
See also "Scientists Say Everyone Can Read Minds"
and "Grasping the Intentions of Others with One's Own Mirror Neuron System"

Mindsight.
Dr Siegel, author of the book "The Developing Mind", coined the phrase "Mindsight" to denote the mechanism of detecting other's intentions, imitation and learning.
"The mirror neuron hypothesis is at the core of this research. This system of neurons allows the brains in humans (and primates) to perform its highest tasks including learning, imitating and empathizing. The mirror neuron system allows for the ability to create an image of the internal state of another’s mind. For example, one study had subjects watch a hand move forward to caress someone else and then saw another hand push it away rudely. The brains of the subjects registered the pain of social rejection as if it was happening to them. Mirror neurons are involved in social/emotion intentions as the brain simulates these actions providing a template for anticipating what will happen next. Mirror neurons reveal that the brain is able to detect the intention of another person, a possible mechanism not just for imitation and learning but for what Siegel calls mindsight." (see "The Mirror Neuron Mindfulness Hypothesis By Shelley Norton, Ph.D." )

Dr Siegel also planned a joint two day seminar with Dr Jack Kornfield on "The Wise Heart and the Mindful Brain, Buddha Meets Neurobiology"

Topics include:
* Buddhist psychology’s core principles of mental health and well being
* The structure of the mind and how understanding consciousness and mental patterns can lead to freedom
* How to incorporate compassion and forgiveness into our work and our life
* The powerful effects of mindfulness trainings on body and mind
* The practices and principles of transforming difficult emotions at their root
* How intention and motivation (and the practical understanding of karma) become essential tools for change in with ourselves and others
* The wisdom of positive psychology, and the art of healing
* The nature of attention and the power and practices of the mind to cultivate mindful awareness
* How mindful awareness can be considered a form of “intrapersonal attunement” that catalyzes mental, interpersonal, and physiological well-being
* The overlap among secure parent-child attachment, mindfulness, and the integrative function of the brain, especially in the prefrontal cortex
* The role of a “resonance circuit” in mindfulness practice that enables an individual to attune to others and oneself
* The nature of a sense of self beneath personality and adaptation that is nurtured to blossom with mindfulness
* The power of psychotherapy to utilize mindful practice in direct and indirect ways that help reduce suffering and promote resilience

Imitation.
It has been increasingly recognized that imitation has a very important role in learning, thinking, and decision making. It is probably more important than logical inference including deduction and induction, and intuition. Imitation is said to be the most important difference between humans and other animals. Notwithstanding the saying about aping monkeys, our ability to imitate has much surpassed the apes.

The article MIRROR NEURONS and imitation leaning as the driving force behind "the great leap forward" in human evolution, by V.S. Ramachandran asks the question why hominids have the current brain size since 250,000 years ago, but only recently developed language, art and culture. It seems that there was a great leap forward in human evolution linked to mirror neurons, imitation and language evolution.

Neuro-cognitive science.
More speculations involve linking memes, the notion of self, consciousness, and even out of body experience (OBE) to mirror neurons. Mirror neurons provide the biological basis for modeling the self, others and the world. These models are probably brain software, and the mirror neurons are the hardware for the models. All these are very exciting vistas opened by the discovery of mirror neurons. Neuro-cognitive science will as the Dalai Lama said, one day confirmed many of the Buddhist notions about the self and mindfulness.

Newsweek: Exercise Is a State of Mind

Researchers are learning more about how physical activity affects our moods. Is sweat the hot new antidepressant?

By Michael Craig Miller, M.D.

A sound mind in a sound body is a short, but full description of a happy state in this world," wrote the British philosopher John Locke. Three hundred years later, research shows that we should begin thinking of body and mind health as conceptually identical. The two are linked at the deepest levels.

You may have concluded that you are one of those people with I-don't-feel-much-like-exercising genes. But if you find the science convincing, begin to picture healthy nerve cells plumping and sprouting. Does that motivate you? If not, let's hope that scientists will soon find that gentle nudge—new information, a form of psychotherapy or a medication—that will help you feel like it and keep you moving. Whoever finds the starter motor, the genetic wellspring of motivation, will have found a key to good health.

Tonglen Practice When Things Fall Apart

"When Things Fall Apart" is the title of a wonderful book by Pema Chödrön, a Western Buddhist nun and one of the most respected and loved teachers of Buddhism in the West today.
We all have difficult situations at one time or another, I think what she has to say is important and profound. It comes from the Lojong and Tonglen tradition of Buddhism.



If you don't have access to the book, there is an online excerpt "When Things Fall Apart, Heart Advice for Difficult Times, Widening the Circle of Compassion"

In difficult times, we must start with openness towards a space where we do not cling to self-righteousness, blame others, caught in our own version of reality.
"When it hurts so bad, it's because I am hanging on so tight. What it implies is that pain comes from holding so tightly to having it our own way and that one of the main exits we take when we find ourselves uncomfortable, when we find ourselves in an unwanted situation or an unwanted place, is to blame."

Instead accepting our hatred and aversion for others as our own, "..... what we reject out there is what we reject in ourselves, and what we reject in ourselves is what we are going to reject out there. But that, in a nutshell, is how it works. If we find ourselves unworkable and give up on ourselves, then we'll find others unworkable and give up on them. What we hate in ourselves, we'll hate in others. To the degree that we have compassion for ourselves, we will also have compassion for others. Having compassion starts and ends with having compassion for all those unwanted parts of ourselves, all those imperfections that we don't even want to look at."

This is the result of our Interbeing , our interconnectedness with others. If we hate or are angry with someone, it means hating or being angry with ourselves, and vice versa.

"We start with ourselves. We make ourselves right or we make ourselves wrong, every day, every week, every month and year of our lives. We feel that we have to be right so that we can feel good. We don't want to be wrong because then we'll feel bad. But we could be more compassionate toward all these parts of ourselves. When we feel right, we can look at that. Feeling right can feel good; we can be completely sure of how right we are and have a lot of people agreeing with us about how right we are. But suppose someone does not agree with us?

On the other hand, when we find ourselves feeling wrong, convinced that we're wrong, getting solid about being wrong, we could also look at that. The whole right and wrong business closes us down and makes our world smaller."

Tonglen is "the art of taking and giving by breathing". It is at first, not at all intuitive, usually practice recommends breathing in prana, qi and all the good things, and getting rid of our bad things.
Tonglen is the opposite. Breathing in all the sufferings of the world, including ours, and absorb them in our hearts. Does it not make us sick? Yes, if it stops there. All the suffering we absorb must be "processed" in our hearts to become joy and bliss, which is then radiated when breathing out. We breathe in dark, heavy and hot poison and breathe out white, light and cool compassion. It works wonders.

Some points of the practice of Tonglen:

As you breathe in, take in and accept all the sadness, pain, and negativity of the whole world, including yourself, and absorb it into your heart.
As you breathe out, pour out all your joy and bliss; bless the whole of existence.
Understand your attachments, your aversions, and your indifference, and love them all.
When practicing unconditional acceptance, start with yourself.

Details of the practice can be found in: The Seven Points of Mind Training, Exchanging Self for Others , where you can find commentaries by Osho, Chogyam Trungpa, Pema Chödrön, Jamgon Kongtrul, Alan Wallace, Geshes Rabten and Dhargyey, and Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

Further references:
Wiki entry on Pema Chödrön
Shambhala

Study: Group Thinking Clouds Decisions

People have a harder time coming up with alternative solutions to a problem when they are part of a group, new research suggests.

Scientists exposed study participants to one brand of soft drink then asked them to think of alternative brands. Alone, they came up with significantly more products than when they were grouped with two others.

The researchers speculate that when a group of people receives information, the inclination is to discuss it. The more times one option is said aloud, the harder it is for individuals to recall other options, explained Krishnan, associate professor of marketing at Indiana University.

Resisting the chocolate temptation

Why is it hard to resist our cravings even when we know it is irrational? Does it have anything to do with our mind works?

Cindy Mason made an interesting observation about chocolate eating, in her article "More Notes on Self Awareness."

She said: "I know that chocolate is making me fat. And I have read a book about it. And everyday I wake up to post-its on my door reminding me about my weight. But I eat it anyway. Is there some other aspect of self awareness I am missing? Perhaps. If my best friend quit eating chocolate too, it would be easier for me as a human, to quit."

This is a perfect example of a "multi mind" at work. We all have multiple minds, in the sense used by Marvin Minsky in "The Society of Minds" and "The Emotion Machines"

The society of minds is not only outside, but inside ourselves. We have multiple minds which can be in conflict with each other. Minds are not only rational, it includes intuition, emotions, instinct as well (more like the concept of mind in Buddhism). It can also have several rationality models, it is like having a neural net, an expert system, a general logical inference machine, a analogical reasoning model all at once.
Originally the various minds derive from our basic needs of hunger, thirst, sex and reproduction, sleepy, threat, etc, but have developed further by evolution.

This is nice way of escaping Gödel's incompleteness theorem. With several minds, we cannot expect consistency in the large any longer, only consistency within each subsystem.

Back to the chocolate example, the rational mind says it is bad for weight control. But another system in our minds says it is fun to eat chocolate, and another says that it is alright if we eat it in moderation. But what is moderate? What is the border between moderate and immoderate? It seems fuzzy logic can help us defining the term moderate, in any case it is not a clear cut boundary.
Perhaps another part of our mind associates chocolate with pleasant memories such as childhood or Valentine.

Minsky thinks that the Emotion Machine problem, i.e. how the different minds are orchestrated illustrates a very fundamental problem for Artificial Intelligence, and if we could understand it, we would understand ourselves much better. The fact that not a single system is dominant, and can be overruled by another, is the way evolution has developed to protect ourselves.
A single control of the mind (homunculus), in contrast, is much less democratic.

From the memes point of view, the problem is not hard to understand, memes forming memeplexes, simply compete with each other. The conflict resolution mechanism is still unknown at this stage.

From the Buddhist standpoint, the above considerations are important when we look inwards mindfully, to be aware of forces currently at work.

Science and Buddhism

Source: Buddha-inside.blogspot.com

Talk given by Ajahn Brahmavamso to lay people at the Dhammaloka Buddhist Centre, Nollamara, Western Australia, on 19th of October 2001.

Sometime ago, I was invited to the West Perth Observatory as part of the Centenary Federation celebrations in Western Australia. The youth groups of W.A. organised all the events. One of the events they presented was entitled 'Our Place in Space'. The idea was to try and find out whether the future would be one which followed science or one which would follow religion. They wanted to see how those two, so called contradictory approaches to life, would pan out into the future. So they invited representatives from a couple of religions. I represented the Buddhists, and a teacher from a prestigious Christian school represented the Christians. The State Astronomer and a young person from