2022-04-02 Matthew Brensilver: Mindfulness, Dharma, Mental Health & Science Part 1
IInsight Meditation CenterApr 3, 2022 at 1:28 am1h 7min
M
00:05Matthew Brensilver
So welcome to all of you. Happy to be with you and be reflecting on these themes this morning. I just have a few few slides that I'm not planning to present a lot in that form. But here you see the growth of interest in meditation in the scientific literature. So over the last 30 years, you see from searching for the the keyword meditation 13 in 1991 to almost 2000 last year. And we go back to to William James, say we're saying the faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention over and over again, is the very root of judgment character and will an education which should improve this faculty would be the education par excellence, but it is easier to define this ideal than to give practical directions for bringing it about. In a way, one set of practical directions for bringing in about is is what we do, when we do this attentional training that we do. But this is also this, this Asian monastic path is also a mystical path that is not attentional training for its own purposes. Exactly. And so again, we have James echoing with a certain kind of reverence for for this mystical dimension. Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness, as we call it is but one special type of consciousness. Well, it's all about it parted from it from the by the film mist of screens, their life potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go through life without suspecting their existence, but no account of the universe in its totality can be final, which leaves these other forms of consciousness disregarded. How to regard them as the question for they're so discontinuous with ordinary consciousness, they may determine attitudes, though, they cannot furnish formulas and open a region, though they fail to give a map, they forbid a premature closing of our accounts with reality.
Unknown Speaker
The increase in the kind of scientific interest around meditation is evident, reflected in the increase in in practice use of meditation. And so this is there's not good data from from more recently that I could find easily. But but one of the kind of repeated national surveys here we see from 2012 to 2017. You see that growth in that that center center columns of meditation, and this is this is just have you practice meditation at some point in the past 12 months? That's that's been the question. And you see, it's grouped here with with, with yoga and chiropractic three, which is kind of interesting and sort of a testament to the state of how these things are grouped together is is meaningful in itself. Here's data for for kids. You see, the, again, the growth over the this period of five years and I imagine there's been a lot of growth since 2017. Certain just anecdotally, when I teach retreats, if there's 100 People in the retreat, there will be men. I don't know what it's a lot of people who are now coming into retreat residential retreat through the route of apps and digital technology. And, and so the, the, let me pause this for a moment that the kind of motivations that people are coming in with to practice meditation about 10% were recommended by a physician. Yeah. Maybe 20% Did consulted a teacher or a class, most people are practicing on their own actually, it seems. And the people who did consult with a class or teacher something, the median annual spending on meditation was $120. And the practice motivations, the practice motivations, were general wellness or, or disease prevention and about three quarters of people improving energy in 60%, improving memory, concentration, and about half of the respondents. And I don't know where enlightenment was there, but it's lower down, right? And so, this is a different this is, this is the convergence or collision of different traditions. And so, the question like how should we? How should we think about the application of a kind of Asian renunciate tradition to the realm of mental health of healing? What what exactly is the dharma for? And who gets to decide what it's for? Or what is to use medical language? What is the scope of practice of the dharma? What is the the scope of practice of a nurse or nurse practitioner or physician or something like this? What is the scope of practice of the dharma? And how is how is the dharma transformed by its interaction with the realm of mental health with the realm of all the different different encounters it's having in this culture? In the The New York Times about now above, about 15 years ago, they wrote the questions not whether mindfulness meditation will become a sophisticated therapeutic technique, or lapse into self help cliche. The answer to that question is yes to both.
Unknown Speaker
So we can think about well-being as a kind of as a continuum as a continuum. And so on one end, we have the most intense, unmitigated suffering. And then on the other end, we have like just profound flourishing, maybe we call it self actualization or awakening or something like this. And then at the midpoint, we have something what we call normal, no. Of course, Maslow said, what we call normal in psychology is really a psycho pathology of the average. So undramatic, and so widely spread that we don't even notice it. Ordinarily, the very harsh language actually, but what we call normal is the psychopathology of the average the meaning, what we consider kind of like, what, an okay, human life is actually full of dukkha. And treated traditionally, the path of dharma has been largely devoted to the span of well being from okay enough to profound flourishing. It's been about potential creating well being. It's been about kind of refining out more and more subtle layers of suffering. But Importantly, the the dharma has relevance for this half of the spectrum of well-being to. And this is where the public health interest really is. This is where there's much more bang for the buck, actually, fiddling with the subtle Calais says attachment to light and bliss, this is not the priority of public health institutions. Yeah. It's like, no, there's like so much suffering. And how can this path of practice be of use in those ways? So there are academic, and there's, there were so many different ways I might have gone during this this time together, and how I sort of structured the different themes and am Yeah, no doubt, leaving, lots of questions unanswered. And, but hopefully, we we have some, some productive discussions together. So there are one of the questions is how we sort of situate this Buddhist tradition with with science with empiricism. And, and in enact the academic world, there isn't something there are there are buildings that separate different departments, there's the biology, and this is the Literature Department, and this is education, this is medicine, right. And then there are these kind of siloed academic departments based on particular expertise. But then there are also increasingly common interdisciplinary approaches, interdisciplinary approaches where you're bringing to bear a range of different forms of expertise and hear the problem rather than the discipline becomes the focal point. And a very diverse expertise is relevant. And what I would say what I often say is that that Duke, is an interdisciplinary problem. Yeah. It is not the province of just like, one discourse, yeah, be it dharma, science or any.
Unknown Speaker
And the fact that the dharma is, is the only medicine I would say, for certain species of suffering, doesn't mean it's the medicine for all species of suffering. And how we, we kind of this, this dialogue that's happening between disciplines is important and we want to have it in in intelligent ways. So what is the stance and I have like, very deep devotion, in for in to science and the spirit of empiricism, and obviously, to the dharma, which I have have, dedicated my energy to life till. And so anyway, as I talk, I'm sort of like, on one shoulder, I have my dharma teachers. And on the other shoulder, I have my scientific mentors. And I'm trying not to modify either of them. And we will see how I do. Yeah. We'll see. Yeah. So what is the what is the stance of the dharma towards other discourses towards science, medicine, philosophy, history, these things? What is the stance of a religious tradition to these other other traditions? So, so one possible stance is just to ignore to ignore these other disciplines. And this would go something like well, the dharma is is dukkha might be an interdisciplinary problem, but the dharma is really suffering. For all that truly matters. Yeah. Another stance might be competition, this is a very familiar stance of religious traditions towards the secular, a sense of like, yeah, that that the the secular, the scientific, the historical is a kind of encroachment on this sacred ground of the dharma needs to be fought off in some ways you see this acted out historically and present. Another way of situating dharma science is something like, what non non or non overlapping magisteria Yeah, so there's a famous phrase from Stephen Jay Gould, who was an evolutionary biologist and a science communicator and was trying to situate, like, find a way for religion and science to coexist somewhat peacefully. And Gould said, science tries to document the factual character of the natural world and to develop theories that coordinate and explain these facts. Religion, on the other hand, operates in the equally important, but utterly different realm of human purposes, meanings and values, subjects that the factual domain of science might illuminate, but can never resolve. That that was, that was his attempt non overlapping magisteria ways of of situating dharma science, religion science. There's another way and have something like selective appropriation there's, there's the cultural appropriation of kind of, on one side of science or mental health of,
Unknown Speaker
divorcing mindfulness from its cultural rich cultural history. But the other side, there's a kind of selective appropriation of how, for example, the the sort of tropes and dharma of highlighting supportive scientific data, things that sort of confirm our Buddhist presuppositions and sort of trotting out data that amplify those, so much of like, the way neuroscience is used rhetorically, is an attempt to convince us that we should keep practicing, which is okay, that's all right. But this is a kind of, selectively, cherry picking certain, certain bits of science as a way of reinforcing Buddhist notions. And I just want to say, science doesn't just give it also takes. Yeah. And so if we, as dharma practitioners get into the business of marshaling scientific evidence for our claims, we want to do this carefully, because science doesn't just give it will take to Yeah. Now, the last kind of relationship between these these different traditions which is is closest to my heart is something like a conversation. It is a truly bi directional flow of information, it is treating dukkha as an interdisciplinary problem with a degree of reverence for the, the the respective zones of expertise. And, and it is about accepting influence. In couples therapy, there's a notion of like, accepting influence, can one partner accept the influence of another? Yeah, and I think we want to be open open to accepting influence. So there is I want to say the problem of scientism, scientism, in this discussion, there's the problem of scientism, which is sort of the sense that that science is the ultimate arbiter of all kinds of claims and all value or something, it's sort of the kind of reductionistic vision of the plurality of knowledge traditions. And you Yeah, Karl Popper said, despite my admiration for scientific knowledge, I'm not an adherent of scientism, for scientism dogmatically asserts the authority of scientific knowledge, whereas I do not believe in any authority and have always resist the dogmatism.
Unknown Speaker
The more you study, the philosophy of science, the more humble you are about what science does and does not do. And so, there needs to be there is and I think in in scientists who are conscious of the, this, the philosophy that kind of epistemological understanding of science, there is a lot of humility, and and empiricism is the scientific method is has staggering power. And many of the claims of the dharma are empirical claims they are, they are empirically testable claims. They are falsifiable claims. Yeah, the nature of unhappiness of well-being of flourishing claims about the value of training or attention in this way claims about the value of ethics for well-being claims about how mindfulness, alleviate suffering, these are all actually empirical claims. And science is a powerful way of assessing the validity of empirical claim. And maybe even more fundamental science, in my experience is not always practice in this way. But science, I think, when done well is actually a form of intellectual honesty. It's a form of intellectual honesty, a willingness to be wrong. And that is the willingness to be wrong as like, just obviously, profoundly lacking in the world. So the last thing I want to say about this, and then I'll just say a few more things before we pause and open it is that the commitment to deep love to awareness, to a kind of reverential stance to the EU in relation to the dharma, I feel this is actually compatible with a scientific sensibility. And there's this sense of like, well, if we, we welcome in kind of some of the impure empiricism, what happens is somehow the sacred will be compromised. And I don't think it has to be that way. It might go that way. But I don't think it has to be that way. And I don't think the kind of openness to the discourse of science these kinds of things necessitates a kind of reductionistic vision of the path of its potency of its beauty of its depth.
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