Comments on: Monks in the lab http://tonsoftime.com/2007/04/09/monks-in-the-lab/ Un-stress, organize, slow down Tue, 17 Aug 2010 21:38:00 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 By: TonsofTime - Enjoy the now » New on TED: Mattieu Ricard on Training the Mind http://tonsoftime.com/2007/04/09/monks-in-the-lab/comment-page-1/#comment-237 TonsofTime - Enjoy the now » New on TED: Mattieu Ricard on Training the Mind Mon, 05 Nov 2007 20:39:07 +0000 http://tonsoftime.com/?p=8#comment-237 [...] Here is a related post. [...] [...] Here is a related post. [...]

]]> By: ton http://tonsoftime.com/2007/04/09/monks-in-the-lab/comment-page-1/#comment-4 ton Tue, 10 Apr 2007 20:03:33 +0000 http://tonsoftime.com/?p=8#comment-4 The documentary gives a good impression, and scientifcally, the experimenters have to take into account that the 'samples' of test subjects are not neutral. How they try to do this, is not explained in the film, you are right about that. With the MRI's they were looking at the brains of monks in different states of consiousness. They were not studying compassion per se. What I liked to watch on Dutch public television, was the story about the work of Paul Ekman with his Facial Action Coding System (see http://www.paulekman.com/) and also the footage about the functional MRI's of the monks, about which I heard during the seminar, and in reading the syllabus of Alan Wallace. The documentary gives a good impression, and scientifcally, the experimenters have to take into account that the ‘samples’ of test subjects are not neutral. How they try to do this, is not explained in the film, you are right about that. With the MRI’s they were looking at the brains of monks in different states of consiousness. They were not studying compassion per se.

What I liked to watch on Dutch public television, was the story about the work of Paul Ekman with his Facial Action Coding System (see http://www.paulekman.com/) and also the footage about the functional MRI’s of the monks, about which I heard during the seminar, and in reading the syllabus of Alan Wallace.

]]> By: Ton from Utrecht http://tonsoftime.com/2007/04/09/monks-in-the-lab/comment-page-1/#comment-3 Ton from Utrecht Tue, 10 Apr 2007 19:10:27 +0000 http://tonsoftime.com/?p=8#comment-3 Thank you. I watched it on the internet tonight. It's a nice documentary, that leaves important scientific questions unexplained, however and doesn't satisfy me. The central thesis of the docu is: doing meditation enhances control of the mind, compassion, etcetera. Although - being a meditator in the vipasana tradition myself - I do believe (...) this is true, the film suggests, but never explains how this is scientifically proven. We see monks with a certain amount of training who have this mind control, compassion, etc. Now imagine they have become monks because they were very good in mind control and compassion, etc. - I mean: even before they started meditating. Or after much training... Even then we don't know now if everybody who would meditate enough, would "gain" in this respect. These are not proper experiments, these are correlations that can prove almost anything. Thank you. I watched it on the internet tonight. It’s a nice documentary, that leaves important scientific questions unexplained, however and doesn’t satisfy me. The central thesis of the docu is: doing meditation enhances control of the mind, compassion, etcetera. Although – being a meditator in the vipasana tradition myself – I do believe (…) this is true, the film suggests, but never explains how this is scientifically proven.
We see monks with a certain amount of training who have this mind control, compassion, etc. Now imagine they have become monks because they were very good in mind control and compassion, etc. – I mean: even before they started meditating. Or after much training… Even then we don’t know now if everybody who would meditate enough, would “gain” in this respect. These are not proper experiments, these are correlations that can prove almost anything.

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