AAR: Meditation and Science Panel
American Academy of Religion 2009, Day 1
The first presenter on this panel was very well meaning and had some mildly interesting things to say, but as with much of the “Buddhism and Science” dialog, it was mostly a bunch of “sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Beginning with a quote from Lopez’s new book on the subject, Dr. Cho tried to argue for a slightly more positive reading of the exchange between Buddhism and science than Lopez allows for, but ended with a warning about “the prison that the label of science creates.” It seemed obvious that the talk was well-meaning, but the content was a string of sentences full of jargon, most of which I found my Orwellian self translating into simpler, clearer, language. (In case you haven’t read it, Orwell’s 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language” is a must read for any writer. In it, he argues for clear speech and writing over convoluted “academic” English.)
The second presenter was clear, simple, and to the point. This was partially because her presentation was prepared the night before; but nevertheless, Brown University’s Dr. Britton gave a clear discussion of the study of “meditation” and “mindfulness” in contemporary America. She notes that the number of professional articles published on “meditation” has increased four-fold and that government funding for “meditation” related studies has increased 20 times since the year 2000. Of these many new studies, very few have actually defined “meditation” in any useful sense, and her clear warning was that the field needs to slow down and consider itself critically before continuing this trend. One fascinating thing she said was that the word “mindfulness” has now come to mean “acceptance” in many circles. This may be because the idea of mindfulness and meditation has become so removed from its context in Asian religious practice that it has become naught but a staging place for Western neurosis (my interpretation of her claims). She cited a researcher who literally thought “mindfulness” and “acceptance” (in terms of westerners’ neuroses of worthlessness) were synonymous. This she found highly problematic, and went on to say that many people seem to think that meditation is capable of being used to treat all kinds of psychological disorders. This, she said, may actually be a dangerous assumption, and also noted that the most recent review of hundreds of professional articles on the subject found that no significant conclusions about the efficacy of meditation can be arrived at with the current state of evidence. Two other important points she made were that 1) ethical behavior is missing from the discussion of mindfulness practice, and 2) isolation is the leading cause of depression in America and yet a sense of sangha is missing from much of popularized mindfulness practice.
Some of the most interesting dialog was incited by Dr. Dan Arnold’s (U. Chicago) questioning of the entire enterprise of “meditation” & “science” dialog, from a philosophical standpoint. He questioned the clarity of both sides of the discussion and of the concepts being employed in the scientific studies of meditative states cited by previous presenters. What’s more, he implied that without dealing with the “mind-body” problem much of the discussion may be altogether pointless. He also went off on a discussion of Dharmakirti and Dignaga that, it seemed to me, the only other person in the room who understood was John Dunne.
Very interesting statements were likewise made by Dr. John Dunne, who’s presentation was aptly titled, “Who knows what meditation is? Who is to blame?” One of his main points was to ask the question of the group, “Who among us has actually studied and practiced enough to have any clear idea what “meditation” even means?” Like Arnold, he sought to problematize the discussion. A quote, slightly off topic, but one I would be remiss not to cite: “The academic study of religion is just perennialism and reductionism.” However, unlike Dr. Arnold, Dunne felt that the problem was mostly a lack of study and not a deep, and perhaps insurmountable, philosophical problem. That is, he affirmed the scientific studies that show the connection between meditation and positive clinical results, especially with reference to mindfulness based stress reduction. He also came to the aid of the several scientists in the group, when their enterprise was questioned. Two pain researchers from the Université de Montréal were on hand to describe their research and present plenty of brain scans and self reporting questionnaires. Very interesting research is being done on pain response and meditators. A group (albeit a small one) of Zen practitioners were tested for pain response alongside an equal sized control group who had never meditated. During the experiment, participants were told specifically not to meditate and that they should simply wait to experience the sensation of extreme heat on their leg as they lay in the brain scanner. To make a long story short, the Zen practitioners required two degrees more heat in order to produce the same self-reported “pain” response as those in the control group. Furthermore, the brain scan showed that the Zen practitioners’ brains were more active in places that showed that they were “experiencing” more pain, but significantly less active in higher-order processing areas that indicated value judgement on the “pain experience.” The researcher suggested that it was the Zen practitioners’ training to observe and not judge their experience that was a significant factor in the difference in reported, as well as “empirically” tested, “pain” experiences between the two groups. Furthermore, they tested the depth of the grey matter of all their participants and found significant differences between the Zen practitioners and control group when it came to the area around the part of the brain that deals with pain modulation. The greatest difference being found in those that had the longest experience with meditation.
Having studied research psychology in undergrad, I can say that, without a doubt, IF the study did not have so many statistical problems and reliability problems, it would be a kind of smoking gun for those who want to use neuroscience to justify meditation. However, there are several things, none of which were properly brought up by responders or the audience, that a good scientist would immediately question about the study. (and I say these things in the hopes that in fact the researchers can overcome them and succeed in their endeavor) First, their group was only 18 subjects. This is not enough for statistical… anything. It is enough for a pilot study, enough to maybe convince someone already sympathetic to the cause to fund a larger study, but little more. Second, the researchers administering the pain to the participants knew which ones were zen practitioners and which were not. This study would have to be done “double-blind”, meaning that the researchers and participants should not know (to the extent possible) if they are in the control group or not. Third, as mentioned by the presenter himself, we do not know if people with more grey matter may in fact simply have a trait that makes them far more likely to enjoy and perhaps even seek out meditation or meditative states. Fourth, Zen practitioners have to endure pain during long hours of sitting, might it not simply be learned pain modulation from these experiences that lead to their pain modulation in the experiment? One way to test this would be to add a third group to the experiment, football players (for instance), or anyone known to have extensive experience with pain but not necessarily any with meditation. Even so, it is not clear that it is meditation that is causally linked, but merely “the practice of Zen.” What does this mean? How many hours of the day do Zen practitioners sit on the cushion and “actually” meditate? What is meditation in this context? What is it in any context? This is not clear to scientists, or to anyone else for that matter. And this is exactly why many neuroscientists hesitate to support such studies, other than to say, “Yes, it sounds nice and warrants more study.” Will these studies do anything more than eventually validate a centuries old practice from the biomedical model’s perspective? Is that particularly useful to us? Some of the participants were unsure, but despite the methodological considerations, it seems that what the issue brought up by the panel is really about is not science at all, but culture. This, I believe, is another instance of contemporary Western society trying to decide what to do with “meditation.” It is trying to come to grip with its “Asian” “other” and trying to decide what it wants to do with the claims of the importance of subjective experience. It is important, then, not so much as a way of finally deciding what meditation “really is,” but for deciding how Western culture will interact with something called “meditation.”
