#39: Buddhist sign

Is this true?

This sign in a local health food shop seems questionable to me. Why should the absence, rather than presence, of thought be desirable? What about trying to use our powers of thought to their fullest potential – is that not equally praiseworthy? Or even having the brain ‘fizz like a firework’, as Tim Parks puts it in his account of his search for a cure for chronic pain, Teach Us to Sit Still. Parks found meditation helpful and interesting, but was concerned that a quiet brain could actually diminish creativity.

The ‘Joycean buzz’

I also wonder whether it is possible to ever empty the mind of what neurologist Oliver Sacks called the irrepressible ‘Joycean buzz’ and A S Byatt, describing her literature-oriented character Frederica, a ‘chatty linguistic self’. Among my persistent ‘buzz’, for example, are dialogues with imaginary people and imaginary representations of real ones, snatches of songs, visualisations, problem-solving suggestions, the ‘pop’ of new ideas, intentional and unintentional memories, and a stream of other mental odds and ends, all often bringing with them intense emotions. 

I'm inclined to consider this a survival technique, as though the brain were constantly ticking over, scanning for problems to solve and meaning to make. I used to think of my imaginary dialogues as faintly embarrassing, then necessary, and now have actually come to see them as a sign of mental health, since if I am ever feeling particularly low they quieten down. This suggests that being ‘without thought’, as the notice above enjoins, may not be the healthiest option.

And yet I wish for more focus; not an empty mind, but a more disciplined one, which would include periods of quietness and much-needed rest from the inner chatter. But in my own experiments with meditation I find it singularly difficult to stop my mind wandering. My version of the sign would read: ‘a focused mind is something to aim for and a powerful tool’.

What do the scientists say?

So what do scientists say about our mental landscapes, and the need to tend them? A 2012 study tried to discover whether meditation can lead to longer-term changes in thinking and feeling which would last longer than the meditation session itself. Using a small sample of 24 people, it investigated mindfulness training and also compassion-based meditation, in which people are encouraged to have empathy towards others and view everything in the world as a source of support and benefit. They monitored participants’ amygdala, the part of the brain which focuses attention towards emotionally significant stimuli.

Results broadly showed that meditation can improve emotional stability and response to stress (at least, stress induced in test conditions). Those who had practised mindfulness meditation responded less intensely to pictures of human enjoyment and suffering, and to neutral images. Those who had done compassion-based meditation also responded less intensely to images of enjoyment and to neutral images, but those who did it most frequently showed heightened response to images of human suffering. For reasons I do not understand, this last finding correlated with decreased depression in these people. ‘Overall, these results are consistent with the overarching hypothesis that meditation may result in enduring, beneficial changes in brain function, especially in the area of emotional processing,’ says co-author Gaëlle Desbordes.

The mind’s effect on the body

And of course our mental and physical well-being are linked. The Radio 4 programme ‘Inflamed Response’ looked at some of the evidence that negative states of mind actually influence our physical health – it quotes one study of 42 couples, showing that minor wounds healed more slowly after negative interactions between them than after supportive ones. Another study quoted on the programme showed that people who feel that they are lonely are more vulnerable to illness.

So what would a research-supported version of the sign read? Something like: ‘meditation can improve emotional and physical health in the long-term.’ Less snappy but, in my view, more accurate and useful.