| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| shawnsmith |
Posted - 09/08/2006 : 18:10:40
from: drobbins@mindandlife.org
Psychology Today article -- October 2006
The work of the Mind and Life Institute was featured in a cover story
of the October 2006 issue of Psychology Today. The article delves
deeply into the positive effects of meditation on our everyday lives. The
article, titled on the magazine cover, "Secrets of the Buddhist Mind",
discusses how to master your emotions, curb your distractions and
experience love without pain.
The article is written by Pulitzer-Prize winning investigative
journalist and author Katherine Ellison. The author weaves her story tapestry
with personal experience, research facts and an abundance of quotes from
Mind and Life Institute (MLI) board members Richard Davidson, Jon
Kabat-Zinn, Matthieu Ricard, and Alan Wallace; 2006 MLI Summer Research
Institute faculty Daniel Siegel and Clifford Saron; November 2005
Investigating the Mind conference participants Robert Sapolsky, Zindel Segal and
Wolf Singer; plus the Dalai Lama.
She also recommends two new books by MLI board members: Happiness: A
Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill by Ricard and The
Attention Revolution: Unlocking the Power of the Focused Mind by Wallace.
Ellison opens the article, subtitled "Mastering Your Own Mind", with a
personal anecdote of her over-reaction toward her 8-year-old son's
telephone call to 911 when she took away his Game Boy. She repeatedly uses
her parenting mishap to walk the reader through how meditation could
have resolved her negative emotions and defused the confrontational
situation which ultimately included an anguished and embarrassing police
interrogation in her home.
Throughout the article, Ellison effectively compares and contrasts the
differences in the definition of well-being between Western and Eastern
thinking. She writes, "Western science is content to believe that each
of us has a more or less genetically determined set point for
well-being --and that happiness and love happen to us."
Buddhism on the other hand, she contends, frames things differently.
"We can transcend our lot by learning to quiet the mind in meditation --
not merely to relax and cope with stress, as the popular notion of
Buddhism holds, but to rigorously train oneself to relinquish bad mental
habits. Rather than being an end in itself, meditation becomes a tool to
investigate your mind and change your worldview. "
Through meditation, she believes that she would have been able to
recognize the spark that ignited the flames of conflict between her and her
son. In the nano-second between provocation and action, her anger and
fear swamped her judgment and led her down the road of poor decision
making. She concludes, "Meditation, however, promises to break this
apparent chain reaction by allowing us to recognize the 'spark before the
flame'."
The article includes two sidebars: Meditation: Getting Started and The
End of Envy.
To read and enjoy the entire article, please go to the Psychology Today
website at http://www.psychologytoday.com/ and click on "Mastering Your
Own Mind."
For a summary of current and recent news articles featuring the Mind
and Life Institute's work, go to
http://www.mindandlife.org/current.news.html.
Ellison is the author of three books, the most recent of which is The
Mommy Brain: How Motherhood Makes us Smarter. For more information about
her, please go to http://www.katherineellison.com/ |
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