[Buddha-l] buddhism and brain studies

[jkirk]

Excuse my ignorance, but what is a  "happiness set-point" ??
Joanna K. 
============

I am team-teaching a course with a psychologist at the moment,
and I must say that I often feel this way-- I tend to think of it
as the "Bill Murray response" (at the beginning of
Ghostbusters)-- that is, they just like to inflict twisted pain
on college students (unless they are pretty). My colleague's
explanation is that they need hard data, even to demonstrate the
obvious. As such, he is quite skeptical of the usual studies done
in the field of "positive psychology," typically dismissing them
as "subjective accounts with no verifiability." So while "change
your mind, change your brain" seems obvious to me, the whole
blather over neuro-plasticity really does have everybody hot and
bothered, doesn't it?

Given our different approaches, then, one of the fun subjects we
keep dealing with is the huge gap between the widely reported
high levels of "happiness" (contentment, satisfaction, whatever)
at all distributions of income, national/ethnic origin, gender,
physical health, and the like, together with the idea of the
"happiness set-point," versus the Buddhist pronouncement on the
universal pervasiveness of dukkha. 
Interestingly, he tends to dismiss the studies showing people to
be generally pretty satisfied as subjective reporting and hence
unreliable whereas I tend to accept the studies--and my personal
experience of the folks around me (other than American
Buddhists)-- and thus dismiss the Buddhist diagnosis as simply
false (at best) or a religious "bait and switch" at worse
(agreeing with HHDL that everybody wants to be happy and avoid
suffering is easy, but is really a slippery slope to shaving your
head and leaving your "loved ones" behind). The "happiness" of
the positive psych folks is not at all the same as the
"awakening" or "dukkha-nirodha" of the Buddhists. Obviously we
need to set up a well-funded "Institute of Happy Consciousness
Studies" in order to figure it all out. . .maybe some penguins. .
.

In any case. To return to the truly scientific realm of anecdotal
reporting, among the many Zen communities we have around here I
used to often hire a few of the monks as "handy monks" to help
out with painting and other stuff (helping them to fulfill their
"day without work is a day without food" ethic while garnering
merit for myself along the way). 
I long ago learned to *never* hire them within one week of any
kind of
sesshin-- they tended to drive their cars off the roads, knock
over paint buckets, and other sorts of things that convinced me
they just weren't responding to the outside world in a normal
way. . . well, at least not in the way that I wanted.

Jamie


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