February 15, 2009
Who Cares about Buddhist Monks?
Who cares about Buddhist monks, really?
Scientists are researching meditation like never before. Thanks to the advance of imaging technologies, like functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, we're able to see more about the workings of the brain than ever before. And given the number of baby boomer scientists who've either meditated or been around meditation for the last 30 years, it's no surprise that they're making an effort to see what science can tell us about the effects and benefits of meditation.
In a recent lecture, a Buddhist monk was shown lying in the giant fMRI machine as the scientist-lecturer discussed how he produced certain gamma brain waves at a level they had never seen. They said these brain waves were related to to feelings and thoughts of compassion.
The lecturer then said that this monk was able to attain these unusual states and skills as a result of the 40,000 hours he had spent in meditation practice. Then the lecturer said, "Imagine what meditation could do for you!"
Well, given what he just said, there is no way to know the answer to know what meditation could do for us!
We were looking at a monk, a guy who might be the Tiger Woods of meditation. Nobody looks at Tiger Woods playing golf and thinks, "If I practice for for 20 minutes, twice a day, I could become Tiger Woods." And yet we hear about meditators who practice for hours a day for years and decades at a time, and then we're told "If they can get these results, so can you!"
But, is the experience of a "professional meditator," who not only had the inclination to spend all of those hours in contemplative practice, but also has the psychological makeup that allowed him to survive living in a monastery and being celibate… is that really a relevant comparison for people who drive their SUVs to soccer practice to pick up the kids?
I have a number of friends who've been monks in different lineages. Notice that the key word in that last phrase is "been". They were monks and now they aren't any longer. The kind of person who makes it through decades of monastic life is not the same kind of person as one who doesn't.
In other words, it seems more likely that monks are born and not made in the same way that someone who's drawn to being an accountant is not the same as someone who's drawn to being a race car driver.
I'm hoping that what we learn from studying the Mozarts of meditation does have some translation for those of us who are just learning to play chopsticks. But I hope our fascination with meditation and our fervent desire to find some freedom from the difficulties we experience in our daily life doesn't lead us to making irrelevant or false comparisons. Because the only thing worse than finding no help, is having high hopes for help that are then dashed when the results don't manifest.
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Comments on Who Cares about Buddhist Monks? »
We in the west have a very different expectation of monkhood than do eastern religions. Most Thai men spend a period of time, from 6 months to decades in a monastery and very few of them come out with any noticable degree of 'holiness'
I have a Thai friend who spent twelve years as a monk, he regards it as an equivalent to a college education rather than a religious vocation.
I think there is a huge potential for cultural confusion when we try to graft eastern monastic notions onto our Judeo/Christian culture.
Even western 'compassion' has a different
quality to the dispassionate 'compassion' cultivated in eastern forms of buddhism.
What do those gamma waves produce apart from patterns on the MRI screen?–are they any use to the monk or to his immediate environment?
Perhaps they are an anomolous party trick the way some people can wiggle each ear independently. We should be told!
I agree about the differences in expectations about monkhood. When I was in Thailand, I went to an ordination ceremony that, based on the way everyone was behaving, I called "The Buddhist Bar Mitzvah."
Lots of people in their finest, going through the motions, sharing good food, looking proud about the new monk's accomplishment, etc.
Your question about the value of the gamma waves, Ellen, is right on. Until we can reliably train people to generate them, we really don't know much about them… we know some correlations, at best, but nothing causal, let alone practical.