[Buddha-l] Volume 54 Issue 52

[Jackhat1 at aol.com]

In a message dated 8/20/2009 12:11:11 P.M. Central Daylight Time,  
jkirk at spro.net writes:
 
More recently the cutting edge research seems to be coming out  of
Richie Davidson's lab at the Univ. of Wisconsin, who also spoke
at  the conference. They've actually identified two important,
basic forms in  Buddhist meditation--and mapped the neural
circuitry that goes along with  them. These two forms they have
named "Fixed Attention" (FA) which is more  a  "shamatha with an
object" style of meditation and Open Presence or  Open Monitoring
(OM) meditation.  
They're of course also the lab  that first replicated samadhi in a
western Buddhist contemplative. I  understand that research has
now been independently replicated, several  times, at different
labs.
==
 
The book Destructive Emotions by Daniel Goleman  is compilation of a series 
of talks and interactions of a group of  neuroscientists and The Dalai 
Lama. If I remember correctly Davidson was a  member of the group. The 
scientists were engaged in a series of experiments on  meditators using EEG and fMRI 
machines. The book starts off with a series  of experiments on a very 
experienced Tibetan meditator. They examined 6  different types of meditation: a 
visualization, one-pointed concentration,  compassion, devotion, fearlessness 
and an open state (sounds like vipassana).  The yogi would use one of the 
meditation techniques for 60 seconds, not  meditate for 60 seconds, switch to 
another meditation technique for 60  seconds, etc. Interestingly each 
meditation method created a different  mental state involving different parts of 
the brain.
 
Jack





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