Day 6

Friday blog

In yoga this morning a phrase that Richard used struck me as particularly poetic. Use the sound of the breath as "an acoustic thread of concentration". 

Waking up at 5:50, with only five hours of sleep behind you, it's hard to believe how awake and alive you can feel a mere fifteen minutes later when yoga class really gets rolling. I now believe in my ability to get up early, even with limited sleep but it really impedes meditation and wakefulness later in the day!

The first morning presentation was by Clif Saron of the Shamatha Project, an ongoing international research project of the effects of meditation, modeled off the Human Genome Project. You can read about it at shamtha.org. One of the findings which I did not fully understand but seemed really exciting was that comparing retreatants with non-retreatants was that that had more telomerase  indicating that these practices can change us on a very deep level. Shortened telomeres are related to aging, so essentially, if you come to my yoga classes, i can promise that you will live forever ;) 

Then John Dunne from Emory presented on some philosophical considerations we should make before engaging in further mindfulness research. He proposed that many of us are presenting mindfulness/meditation as a magical black box where things (psychological things, health things, etc) mysteriously change. When meditation is viewed as a black box the motivation for reach may covertly become the meditation itself. Meditation research becomes just about proving meditation is good. On this model mechanism is inaccessible. It's difficult to operationalize the term meditation and Dunne encourages researchers to be very clear to themselves and others about what exactly they are studying, to gather data from practitioners, from contemplative scholars, and translators/interpreters even within the course of "hard" scientific or psychological research. He encourages researchers to work in a "trilogue" to operationalize the construct. Other concepts that stuck with me--- in regards to only using ancient texts he cautions that a prescription  is not a description. Similarly he said that authenticity does not matter...even if MBSR is not an "authentic" practice it's what people are doing, so study it! In closing he reminded us that even in Buddhist tradition there is no consensus on what meditation is. It is just a convenient term to include a family of human practices. He proposes that we look at "a family resemblance model" (a DSM type list of characteristics). In the Q&A session following, some frustration was vocalized by the two Geshes that they were not included on the stage recognized as scholars. I didn't follow exactly what this arose from but unfortunately it made me realize that like all human organizations, this one too is imperfect, even with lofty ideals. 

In the afternoon there was a session on Abhidhamma Analysis" but I was too tired to process much of it. Later I attended a breakout session for people interested in the embodiment of awareness in terms if yoga, tai chi, etc. There was really only time for everyone to introduce themselves and their own research but the woman leading the session is interested in somatosensory maps and how they are affected by various contemplative traditions so I have lots of new scientific reading to get into!

The last presentation was by Michel Bitbol and enchanting and endearing and brilliant French man that i spoke with early in the week. He wrapped up the week's presentations and presented some very eloquent philosophy that (for me at least) boiled down to a reminder that "Scientific truth is not all the truth!"

Our final full day concluded with a performance by Ottmar Liebert, an incredible guitarist who is also a Buddhist monk. The show was accompanied by some of his contemplative photography which was poignant and funny and really beautiful. The best part of the night however was the friendship that I formed with Geshe Jampel Senge who was intrigued by my iPad I had been taking notes on and proceed to get sucked into his own email and the wonders of touchscreen typing and predictive text! Another monk sat down on the other side of me and I asked if he wanted to trade spots to sit by his friend and he said "you are my friend! Everyone is my friend!"