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Willing your way to happiness

By Colleen O'Connor

Denver Post Staff Writer

Adam Engle meditates in his home north of Boulder.

Engle is co-founder of the Mind and Life Institute of

Colorado, a research think tank without walls that is

changing the way scientists view meditation and the

brain. The institute is bringing the Dalai Lama to

Denver this fall. (Denver Post / Glenn Asakawa)

Inspired by the dalai lama, a boulder think tank

founded by researcher adam engle is discovering new

links between how we think and how it affects our

lives and bodies.

It seems like you think about it every day, that pesky

problem that won't leave you in peace, making you

anxious or depressed or irritable.

You wonder if you'll ever feel different about it. Or

are you just stuck in a funk forever?

" The previous paradigm for the brain was that no

additional brain cells could form, so there was

relatively fixed real estate in the brain, " says Adam

Engle, chairman and cofounder of the Mind and Life

Institute of Boulder, which is pioneering a new field

known as contemplative neuroscience that examines how

meditation affects the brain.

" People are now realizing you can change your brain, "

he says, " and they want to know what factors or mental

events cause these changes. "

Can how we think change our brains in a way that will

make life more joyful and less stressful?

Can we train our minds to be more attentive, focused

and better at decision-making?

Many scientists exploring these mysteries of our inner

universe are connected to the Mind and Life Institute,

which is bringing the Dalai Lama to Denver on Sept.

17, to be whisked by private helicopter to the Pepsi

Center, for his first visit to Colorado in nearly a

decade.

The Dalai Lama's public talk, " The Science of a

Compassionate Life, " reflects his desire to help make

all beings happier.

It also mirrors cutting-edge research that made news

recently with an experiment at the University of

Wisconsin on a Tibetan Buddhist monk who had spent 30

years meditating in the Himalayas.

Dr. son, director of the Laboratory for

Affective Neuroscience, put the monk, Matthieu Ricard,

into an MRI that videotapes functions of the brain.

Inside the machine, as the monk meditated on

compassion, his brain showed a dramatic increase in

activity in the areas connected to enthusiasm and joy.

The result was magnified in a follow-up study where

son charted the normal, emotional states in the

brains of 150 people, including the monk Ricard. Most

people fell into the middle ground between positive

emotions and negative emotions.

But Ricard, who had been deeply meditating on

compassion when his brain was scanned, nearly soared

off the chart of positive emotions - he had the

highest level of happiness ever documented.

" Meditation is a tool for mind training, for

cultivating certain qualities to change inner

conditions for happiness, " says Ricard in a phone

interview from Washington, D.C., where he is promoting

his new book, " Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's

Most Important Skill. "

" So you're not putting your hopes and fears into outer

consciousness, like whether you're single or married

or whatever, but you can identify which inner factors

can contribute to a deep sense of well-being. "

In other words, happiness is an inside job.

Ricard believes the work of Mind and Life, where he is

a board member, isn't much different from that of

Buddhist practitioners: Scientists want to better

understand how to relieve suffering, while Eastern

contemplatives focus on eliminating destructive

emotions.

" We want to attract attention to the notion that we

underestimate the power of transformation of the

mind, " he says.

" Because sometimes people feel helpless or despondent

about how to do something about it. "

The good news is that you needn't have 30 years'

experience meditating in the Himalayas to improve the

quality of your life.

For example, studies are finding that meditation can

benefit average people with little experience. Workers

in a high-tech company participated in a two- month

course in meditation, then were tested by son and

Jon Kabat-Zinn, professor emeritus at the University

of Massachusetts Medical School, bestselling author of

" Wherever You Go, There You Are, " and a Mind and Life

board member.

Results showed decreased anxiety, improved immune

function and significant changes in brain activity.

If employees in the notoriously high-stressed,

high-tech world can feel better in just a few months,

maybe there's hope for the rest of us.

The idea for such scientific studies came from a

dialogue organized by Mind and Life between

neuroscientists and the Dalai Lama at his home in

Dharamsala, India, in 2000.

" The Dalai Lama challenged the scientists and said,

'Please, these meetings are wonderful, but if we don't

get the information out of the meeting room it is of

limited benefit,' " recalls Engle.

" He asked them to take the practices developed by

Buddhists and other contemplative traditions and test

them in labs. He said, 'If the practices are

beneficial by your standards, then see if there are

ways to teach them in secular environments so more

people can use them.' "

Since then, Mind and Life's primary goal has been to

birth a new interdisciplinary field of science that

answers the question often asked by many of us in

today's frenetic society: How do we create and

maintain a healthy mind?

The idea of reprogramming our brains is attractive to

just about everyone who suffers the knocks of daily

life, from multitasking at the office to shuttling the

kids to soccer practice in rush-hour traffic.

And those who find it hard to concentrate in the midst

of competing demands are intrigued by the idea that

the brain can rewire itself to manifest a more clear

and focused mind.

Unlike Western medicine, which describes mental health

as the lack of anxiety or disease, Buddhist teachings

consider optimal mental well-being as the cultivation

of positive mental states.

Coincidentally, this ancient Eastern practice

parallels the latest developments in psychology. Once

focused on suffering, the field's newest trend is

" positive psychology, " which focuses on cultivating

positive emotions like love and joy.

This confluence of discoveries - in science,

psychology and Buddhism - is generating a growing body

of evidence that shows we aren't forever stuck in

mental ruts.

" Our findings show that characteristics like happiness

and the capacity to focus attention are not fixed, "

says son, a Mind and Life board member.

" They can be improved through training. You can change

your mind by changing your brain and your thoughts.

You can intentionally cultivate positive emotions and

transform how you react to events in your life. "

In other words, scientists now believe happiness is a

skill that can be learned, just like skiing or playing

a musical instrument: With daily practice, you get

ever better.

son, who began meditating in 1974, met the Dalai

Lama in 1992.

" It really helped me catalyze my interest in this

area. He had very profound affect on me, and it became

very clear that now was the time for me to come out of

the closet with my interest in this. I was already a

respected scientist and I had a very well- funded lab,

so it was time to make a public statement about (my

meditation practice.) "

This risk paid off, both personally and

professionally, in a way that may benefit all

humanity.

This May, Time magazine named son one of its top

100 people who are transforming the world for his

ability to bridge Western science and Eastern

meditation.

This theme of building bridges dates to the first Mind

and Life conference, called " Gentle Bridges:

Conversations with the Dalai Lama on the Sciences of

Mind. "

" Through Mind and Life we are attempting to build

bridges that I don't think have ever been built

before, in the academy or in any domain of our

culture, " he says. " Bridges between contemplative

practice and modern science. We're bringing the best

of each of those worlds together. The emergence of a

serious area of science is spontaneously arising from

this bridge- building that we've been privileged to

foster. It's a deeply nourishing and exciting journey

to be part of. "

Recently, a contemplative Christian joined the

Buddhists and scientists on this adventure. Last year

Father Keating of Snowmass, who pioneered a

form of Christian meditation called centering prayer,

participated in the Mind and Life dialogue between

scientists and the Dalai Lama, held in Washington,

D.C.

" I'm interested in building bridges between religion

and science, " says Keating. " I think science is part

of revelation, which is not a new idea to me. The

early Christian fathers said there are two books of

revelation: One is the Bible and the other is nature. "

So he finds fascinating the scientific studies into

the inner workings of nature, from the subatomic world

to the brain.

" Experiments at Princeton using MRIs on Buddhists who

have been meditating a long time proved the brain does

respond differently to different kinds of meditative

practice, " says Keating.

" It's a great toe in the door that's challenging the

scientific community. At a very deep level there is a

spiritual dimension and evidence for it, which they've

been denying since the Enlightenment. ... "

The future of the Dalai Lama's work with Mind and

Life, however, is to adapt scientifically proven

contemplative practices to ordinary American life.

" It's fine for those comfortable with using it in a

traditional religious context, " says Engle, " but for

those people who don't feel comfortable with that,

we're exploring how to take the technology and develop

it so people can use it in a secular setting. "

Staff writer Colleen O'Connor can be reached at

303-820-1083 or at coconnor@....

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