Buddhism, Emotions and Happiness

Yesterday, Sunday, like usual I went to temple. It is one of the biggest temples here in Jakarta. And yesterday unlike any other Sundays, there was this guest Reverend from England, visiting Jakarta and therefore he gave a sermon on Emotions.

As was said, developing positive emotions is developing positive states of mind. In the words of Buddha himself, "We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world."

This is in fact, an idea that's in line with current thinking in psychology. This simple philosophy, that changing the way we think can change the way we feel.

For Buddhists, the key method of achieving this is meditation – which usually involves fixing our attention on a body part, the breath, a mantra or an inspirational picture – to arrive at a state where we are not distracted by our thoughts. And psychologists do agree that quite aside from any spiritual connotations, meditation is a powerful tool.

Research has shown that practising meditation regularly – and being more 'mindful', that is, focused on the present moment – has beneficial effects for a range of conditions. These include stress, anxiety, depression, poor sleep and coping with chronic pain. It also has other health benefits like reduced inflammation, improved immunity and lower blood pressure.

Most methods suggest meditating for about 20 minutes twice a day, although many people will find it useful to start with five to 10 minutes twice a day and to build from there.

Meditation in the lab

Dr Richard Davidson, a professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in the US, and his team, have examined the brain activity of eight longtime expert Buddhist practitioners, including monks, while they meditated on unconditional compassion, generating loving empathic thoughts toward all beings.

As a control, 10 student volunteers with no previous meditation experience were also tested after one week of training.

"Our research is related to what Buddhists call neuroplasticity," explains Dr Antoine Lutz, the project's principal investigator.

"We wanted to test whether the training of the mind as cultivated using Buddhist meditative techniques can alter brain functions such as attention and emotions. Comparing these two groups was a way to see whether there's a relationship between mind training and brain activity."

As both groups meditated on compassion, the scientists recorded gamma waves in the subjects' brains using an electroencephalogram. Gamma waves are some of the highest-frequency and most important electrical brain impulses, due to their association with perception and consciousness.

Intriguingly, the electrodes detected much greater gamma wave activity in the experienced meditators, and found that this was much better organised and coordinated than in the brains of the novice meditators.

The novice meditators showed only a slight increase in gamma wave activity while meditating, but some of the experienced meditators produced gamma wave activity more powerful than has ever been reported. And those who had spent the most years meditating had the highest level of all.

Significantly, previous studies have associated mental activities such as attention, memory and learning with the kind of augmented neural coordination found in the experienced meditators.

The extreme gamma wave activity detected in this group has also been associated with weaving together far-flung brain circuits, suggesting higher mental activity and heightened awareness of those mental states most likely to bring happiness.

"The spectacular difference between the two groups suggests that mental training as cultivated in this contemplative tradition can radically alter brain functions," confirms Lutz.

"This is further supported by the group difference in the initial electrical baseline," he continues, "which also suggests these changes persist in a way that infuses daily life with certain qualities cultivated by meditation.

"So certainly this collaborating research with the Buddhist tradition informs our understanding on the possible mechanisms involved in mind training, and possibly wellbeing."


All in all, we have to control our emotions, so we can develop positive states of mind, which would bring happiness to us and people around us.