| ashu |
Posted
on 25-Mar-04 06:23 PM
Matthieu Ricard, a French-born Buddhist monk with a Ph.D. in molecular biology,
and who lives in a monastery in Nepal most of the time, gave an excellent public
lecture in English last night on mind, meditation and neuroscience.
Ricard's was by far the best public lecture I have ever attended in Kathmandu.
Ricard's theses were these: That our mind is 'plastic'; it is malleable. There is growing scientific evidence that with conscious effort (i.e. meditation), the physical structure
of the neurons in the brain can be rearranged.
And he showed some slides of data, glened from experiements done at labs at MIT and Madison, Wisconsin.
As this New York Times article (see below for link) says: "The fact that the brain can learn, adapt and molecularly resculpture itself on the basis of experience and training suggests that meditation may leave a biological residue in the brain -- a residue that, with the increasing sophistication of new technology, might be captured and measured."
All this is very fascinating stuff, indeed - this intersection between neuroscience and meditation. Though researchers are about to publish their findings in NATURE and other such journals, the implications of this kind of research for what it means for unleashing human happiness and expanding human capabilities are simply amazing.
Here's an article to pique your interest:
http://psyphz.psych.wisc.edu/~topolovich/Web%20Page/News/Is%20Buddhism%20Good%20for%20Your%20Health.htm
Enjoy,
oohi
ashu
ktm,nepal
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| Shiva Gautam |
Posted
on 25-Mar-04 08:15 PM
Ashu ji,
Interesting work.
I think the whole human evolution is the result of unconscious meditation (plus non-meditation factors) in some sense. We evolved to what we are today because we meditated, focused, and desired for millions of years. The residue of it resides in the genes. Of course I do not have empirical data to support it, but it is not so difficult to conjecture if one meditates on the thing around us. A couple of times, I suggested to my geneticist /scientist friends that by meditation we probably can change genes and their expression and perhaps help fight diseases. My observations come from the following. Consider a pair twin babies who are separated at birth. One is brought up by an orthodox hindu brahmin family in India, and the other is raised in that part of China or Laos where they eat snakes, astray dogs and monkeys brain ( I am mentionionig different habbit and customs). After a couple of decade sif you serve them together a bowl of rice mixed with fresh canine blood, it is very likely that the boy from India will vomit just by its sight. His system is very likely to reject the food while the boy from Laos may love it. So the difference is almost genetic although they share the same genes. The difference in these two boys is now in their brain. Although this is completely an environmental thing, but the effect it produces is as if it were genetic. I was wondering if we can use meditation to fight against diseases by producing chemicals in the body as if a new gene mutation has occured against the disease. My geneticist friends neither accepted my conjecture nor they argued against it.
I think J Krishnamurti also mentioned the changing of neurons that you mentioned in your citation
Thanks for the info
SG
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