Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 5/22/2013
Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 5/22/2013 |
- Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 5/22/2013
- The science of happiness and compassion
- Insidious machinations
- Oklahoma tornado tragedy shows absurdity of prayer
- Antidepressants May Help With Heart Disease
- Could a Drug Prevent Brain Aging?
- Oklahoma Tornado: How to Ease Children's Anxiety
- Early Morning Stress Reduction Inspiration - 5/21/2013
| Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 5/22/2013 Posted: 22 May 2013 11:00 AM PDT  "One who previously made bad karma, but who reforms and creates good karma, brightens the world like the moon appearing from behind a cloud." ~The Buddha      Read More @ Source | ||
| The science of happiness and compassion Posted: 22 May 2013 12:00 AM PDT
1. Compassion is wired into us Researchers at the Max Plank Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology observed two-year-olds' reactions to seeing an adult who needed help because he or she had dropped an object and had trouble picking it up. The children's pupil size increased — a sign of heightened concern — when they saw the adult in distress. Their concern decreased if they were allowed to help (and 10 out of 12 children chose to do so) or if they saw a second adult come to the rescue. However their signs of concern increased if they were prevented from helping and no one else did so. Despite popular views of evolution as favoring competition and "survival of the fittest" (a phrase Darwin never used), we have clearly evolved to cooperate and to be concerned for one another. As Darwin suggested, "communities, which included the greatest number of the most sympathetic members, would flourish best, and rear the greatest number of offspring." 2. Compassion is spontaneous, selfishness is calculated In a recent paper in Nature researchers detailed a study in which people had to decide how much money to contribute to a common pool. The less time people had to think about their decision, the more generous they were — giving on average 15% more than those with more time. In a second study participants either had to make the same decision in less than ten seconds or were given more time. Again, those given longer to deliberate were stingier. These studies strongly suggest that people have an initial impulse to behave cooperatively, and that selfishness is a more deliberate and secondary phenomenon.  If you like my articles, please click here to check out my books, guided meditation CDs, and MP3s, including The Heart's Wisdom, which includes all four lovingkindness meditations. 3. Compassion makes you cool Psychology researcher Kristin Layous of UC Riverside and a colleague from British Columbia asked nine to eleven-year olds either to perform three acts of kindness – like sharing their lunch or giving their mom a hug when she felt stressed – or to keep track of three enjoyable places they visited each week. Both groups of students improved in well-being over the four weeks of the study, but those students who performed kind acts experienced significantly bigger increases in peer popularity than those students who went visiting. The authors noted that "Increasing peer acceptance is a critical goal, as it is related to a variety of important academic and social outcomes, including reduced likelihood of being bullied." 4. Compassion makes you healthy If compassion increases your social connectedness, then it likely also boosts your health. Research by psychologists Ed Diener and Martin Seligman suggest that our levels of social connectedness predict how long we'll live, how quickly we'll recover from disease, how much happiness and well-being we'll have, and how much purpose and meaning there will be in our lives. One major study showed that a lack of social connectedness is worse for your health than smoking. You'd expect compassion, which emotionally connects us with others, boosts our immunity against ill health. And in fact a study by Thaddeus Pace of Emory University School of Medicine, and colleagues, showed that those study participants who did most compassion meditation showed the least distress when subjected to stress tests, and a reduced level of Interleukin-6, which is a chemical linked to stress, heart disease, arthritis, osteoporosis, type-2 diabetes and certain cancers. 5. Compassion makes you happy Neuroscientist Jordan Grafman from the National Institutes of Health carried out a brain-imaging study which found that the brain's "pleasure centers" which light up when we experience pleasure or experience rewards are just as active when we're giving money to charity compared to when we're given money. Another study found that those who gave were actually happier than those who received. Elizabeth Dunn, of the University of British Columbia, gave money to participants in a study. Half of the participants were asked to spend the money on themselves, while the other half were asked to spend the money on others. At the end of the study, those who had spent the money on others felt significantly happier than those who had spent the money on themselves. And again, this starts young. Another study in which Dunn was involved, along with lead author Lara Aknin, found that even before the age of two, toddlers showed greater happiness when giving treats to others than receiving treats themselves. And the more they sacrifice, the happier they become. Children who forfeit their own resources in order to benefits other kids are happier than when giving the same treat at no cost. The bottom line Compare the above findings to the received "wisdom" that we're inherently selfish. Economic models are based on the assumption that we're motivated by self-interest, and entire political ideologies are founded on that same notion. And yet clearly compassion is an inherent part of our nature, and exercising it enhances our health and enriches our emotional well-being. What's more the level of compassion we have is not a fixed quantity, but can be developed through practice — including meditation. Read More @ Source | ||
| Posted: 21 May 2013 11:00 PM PDT I asked myself today, "What does a failed Zen Buddhism seeker do when they can't intuit pure Mind?" I didn't have to wait long to find the answer. I just looked at a few Zen Buddhism forums on the Internet. They are always well stocked full of failed Zen Buddhisms. Putting what I found into a paragraph it goes like this:
If we had to characterize this with a name, it would be radical agnosticism, that we cannot know. And in the face of being unable to know (in this case know or cognize pure Mind) the best we can do is just stop desiring awakening. It ain't going to happen. Despite all the Zen Buddhism records we have, especially in Zen, of people awakening to pure Mind, our failed Zen Buddhism seeker—the ultimate wimp—has to make sure others are poisoned by his foul and rotting ideas. This is somewhat like reading about self-made millionaires, then trying to become rich, but ultimately failing, only to write a book that nobody ever became rich! Let's face it. Not everyone can awaken to pure Mind. Not everyone can become rich. Not everyone can become a great musician or scientist. Awakening is not easy. But to suggest that striving to cognize pure Mind or realize nirvana is, essentially, a fool's errand is the insidious machinations of a diabolical intellect.
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| Oklahoma tornado tragedy shows absurdity of prayer Posted: 21 May 2013 10:00 PM PDT I understand why people pray. I've done a lot of praying myself. It's a natural reaction to appeal to a higher power when a loved one is seriously ill, lives are in danger, or some other unwanted event begs for divine intervention. But while the motivation for prayer is utterly human, so is prayer itself. Almost certainly there is no God watching over us, listening to pleas for this and that, deciding which to grant and which to ignore. I'm thankful for this. Because it would be worse if actually there were a God to pray to, a supernatural being like Zeus who threw thunderbolts on those he was angry at, while bestowing gifts on favored humans. On my car radio I heard a survivor of the horrific Oklahoma tornado destruction say, "I prayed, and prayed, and prayed... for the tornado to head another way." Again, understandable. However, what a strange thing to want -- to have a tornado tear apart another area, instead of where this woman was. This probably wasn't in her mind at the time; it's the natural consequence of her prayer, though. Kill someone else, not me. What kind of a God would respond to a prayer like that? For sure, no God I want to believe in. If I believed in God, which I don't, I'd much prefer a naturalistic "god" which plays no favorites, treating all alike. Such an entity would be much more akin to Meditation and Taoist notions of the cosmos: it is up to us to adapt to unavoidable circumstances, rather than appeal to some divine being to produce a miraculous avoidance of them. A LA TImes story about how religious people responded to the tornado contains this Bible verse: I form light and create darkness, I make well-being and create calamity, I am the Lord, who does all these things. -- Isaiah 45:7 What a horrible God this Old Testament nightmare is. Like I said, thank god he doesn't exist. I have no use for a God who kills school children by creating a tornado calamity. If that is God's idea of a good time, God can go to hell. Tragedies aren't made less tragic by invoking God's will. Let's cry, be thankful, act courageously, be fearful, express gratitude, and engage in all the other human emotions that arise naturally when awful things happen. Leave God out of it. "In the middle of difficulty, the one thing we know is that God is good," Alan Danielson, the church's senior pastor, told the few dozen attending parishioners. Actually you don't know that, Pastor Danielson. What we know after a disaster hits is that most people are good. They rush to help others; they comfort; they support; they embrace; they cry with the pained and smile with the relieved. And these people don't wait for prayers to spur them into action. They do so naturally. To me, this is truly godlike. | ||
| Antidepressants May Help With Heart Disease Posted: 21 May 2013 08:00 PM PDT
For some patients with heart disease, taking antidepressants may reduce the risk of heart problems brought on by mental stress, a new study suggests. Researchers looked at patients with myocardial ischemia — a condition in which the heart doesn't get enough blood — as they performed mentally stressful activities. All of the patients also had coronary heart disease, or a narrowing of the arteries that supply blood to the heart. Patients in the study who took the antidepressant escitalopram (sold as Lexapro) were about 2.5 times less likely than those who took a placebo to experience myocardial ischemia triggered by mental stress. The findings suggest that an antidepressant, or other treatments that help patients cope with stress, could improve symptoms for some people with coronary heart disease, said study researcher Dr. Wei Jiang, an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University School of Medicine. However, future studies are needed to confirm the results, and to identify the people most likely to benefit from such treatment, Jiang said. Stress and the heart About 30 years ago, doctors observed that mental stress could bring on myocardial ischemia. Studies also have found that people with mental-stress-induced myocardial ischemia are at increased risk of dying from heart disease. Coronary heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States — and about 50 percent of patients with the condition experience mental-stress-induced myocardial ischemia — yet few studies have attempted to find treatments. In the new study, 127 patients were randomly assigned to receive escitalopram or placebo for six weeks. Participants completed a number of tests at the beginning and end of the study, including a treadmill stress test, a math test and a test in which participants told a sad story in order to evoke emotion. During the tests, the researchers examined certain heart symptoms to diagnose myocardial ischemia, such as a reduction in blood pumped out of one of the heart's cambers. After six weeks, about 34 percent of participants taking the antidepressant did not experience myocardial ischemia during the mental-stress tests, compared with 17 percent in the placebo group. The antidepressant did not affect whether patients experienced myocardial ischemia during exercise. Dr. Andrew Freeman, a cardiologist at the National Jewish Health hospital in Denver, said it was not very surprising that drugs that blunt the brain's response to stress would also blunt the heart's response to stress. But what the findings mean for patients in the long term is not known, said Freeman, who was not involved in the study. Future studies are needed to see whether antidepressants might reduce the risk of cardiovascular events like heart attacks, Freeman said. How does it work? It's not clear how antidepressants lower the risk of myocardial ischemia in these patients. The findings did show that patients who took antidepressants were more likely than those who took the placebo to say that they felt like they were in control, and less tense or upset, during the mental-stress tests. Some earlier studies that looked at the effect of antidepressants on patients with both coronary heart disease and depression found that the drugs did not benefit patients more than a placebo did, Jiang said. But patients may not necessarily need to suffer from depression to be susceptible to mental-stress-induced myocardial ischemia, she said. Antidepressants do have side effects, including fatigue and sexual dysfunction. Therefore, future research is needed to understand which patients are likely to benefit most from the drugs, Jiang said. The study is published in the May 22 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. Jiang has a patent application related to antidepressant treatment for mental-stress-induced myocardial ischemia. Follow Rachael Rettner @RachaelRettner. Follow MyHealthNewsDaily @MyHealth_MHND, Facebook & Google+. Originally published on LiveScience.  Read More @ Source | ||
| Could a Drug Prevent Brain Aging? Posted: 21 May 2013 07:00 PM PDT
Sharply reducing calorie intake, by as much as 40 percent, could slow aging in cells and may even prolong life span, studies have suggested. Now, researchers say they have found a way to mimic the beneficial effects of calorie restriction on the brain with a drug. The pill activates an enzyme in brain cells, and the study showed the drug delayed both the cognitive impairment associated with aging and Alzheimer's disease, and the loss of nerve cells that happens with aging. The new study was done in mice, but it suggests scientists could develop drugs that stave off decline in human brain function. "There are clear implications for human health," said Coleen Murphy, a professor at Princeton University who studies aging, but was not involved in the new study. Most previous research on calorie restriction has been done in mice and other organisms used for laboratory research, but studies in humans have shown calorie restriction can boost memory in the elderly. In the new study, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology focused on how calorie restriction affects brain cells. They showed that restricting the calorie intake of laboratory mice by 30 percent boosted levels of an enzyme in the brain, and delayed the loss of nerve cells that can accompany decline in brain function. The calorie-deprived mice also did better on memory tests, compared with their well-fed counterparts. Then, the researchers mimicked calorie restriction — they fed the mice a regular diet, but also gave them the enzyme-blocking drug. These mice had better functioning brain cells, and did better on cognitive tests, just as the mice that were fed a calorie-restricted diet. The study is the first to show that the benefit of calorie restriction on cognitive function is linked with less degeneration of neurons. This is also the first demonstration of a synthetic molecule that mimics the benefits of caloric restriction, said David Sinclair, a professor at Harvard Medical School who previously collaborated with the authors on aging research. "What makes this even more interesting is that the [drug] prevented neurodegeneration, one of the hardest degenerative processes to slow down with a drug," Sinclair said. Whether calorie restriction could increase human life span is not clear. Life span increases have been shown in studies of mice and other research organisms such as roundworms. But studies lasting more than 20 years in monkeys have had conflicting conclusions. Human studies would take even longer and, realistically, not many people are likely to choose a constant state of partial starvation, even if it does prolong their life. The potential benefits of calorie restriction on brain health also need further study, the researchers said. Much more work is necessary to understand whether boosting levels of an enzyme by taking a pill could help human brains function better in old age, and whether such a pill could prevent or even reverse the changes in the brains of Alzheimer's disease patients. No such pill is likely to be without its own side effects, or completely prevent disease, cautioned Li-Huei Tsai and Johannes Gräff, lead authors of the new study. "Our results show that we can delay neurodegeneration, but that is still a long way to actually preventing it," Tsai said. "Presumably, drugs will never be able to totally prevent a disease, but as long as its onset can be delayed, this is all we can hope for." The new study is published today (May 22) in the Journal of Neuroscience. Pass it on: Scientists have made a step toward delaying cognitive decline associated with aging and Alzheimer's disease. Follow MyHealthNewsDaily @MyHealth_MHND, Facebook & Google+. Originally published on LiveScience. Read More @ Source | ||
| Oklahoma Tornado: How to Ease Children's Anxiety Posted: 21 May 2013 06:00 PM PDT
Children may develop anxiety, especially about going to school, after hearing the news that children in Moore, Okla., died when a powerful tornado struck schools, experts say. As of Tuesday (May 21) morning, at least 24 people — including nine children — were reported to have died after an EF-4 tornado raged through the Oklahoma City suburb on Monday afternoon. (The situation is still unfolding, and those numbers are subject to change. The EF-4 rating is preliminary.) Two schools — Plaza Towers Elementary School in Moore, and Briarwood Elementary School in Oklahoma City — were devastated by the storm. "Parents need to reassure children that schools are safe places," said Dr. Victor Fornari, director of child and adolescent psychiatry at North Shore-LIJ Health System in New Hyde Park, N.Y. "Every time something like this happens, it challenges our beliefs in our safety." Children may cite physical complaints, such as stomachaches and headaches, and say they do not want to go to school. "These are normal reactions," Fornari said. Parents should try to distinguish between physical complaints resulting from feelings of anxiety, and when their kids are actually sick. "For many kids, a description of feeling sick is really a description of their worry," he said. Parents may tell children that rare, unpredictable storms can cause destruction, "but we can't live our lives in fear," Fornari said. Even if children are feeling more anxious than usual, they should go to school, he said. The reason it's important to reassure children that they are safe is that unchecked anxiety can interfere with children's ability to function. Some anxiety is useful, because it helps us avoid dangers, he said. "But too much can be immobilizing," he said. About 10 percent of children have anxiety disorders that may make them especially prone to feelings of worry after the Oklahoma tragedy. Such children may have previously had separation anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder or generalized anxiety. These children, who are "already anxiously wired," may become particularly anxious about whether school is a safe place, he said. They need a lot of reassurance. Tragedies that occur after natural disasters have a different feel for children than events related to terrorism or criminal activity, Fornari said. Natural disasters feel less sinister, but they may also leave people feeling that there is nothing that can be done to prevent them, he said. Reminding kids of their school's plan for what to do in the event of a disaster may help, he said. It's important for parents to recognize their own reactions to tragic events, and monitor their own coping strategies, because children will mirror what they see their parents doing, Fornari said. Parents should reach out to extended family members, friends or mental-health professionals if they are having a difficult time. "When parents are coping with and managing their anxiety, children will too," he said. Follow Karen Rowan @karenjrowan. Follow MyHealthNewsDaily @MyHealth_MHND, Facebook & Google+. Originally published on LiveScience. Read More @ Source | ||
| Early Morning Stress Reduction Inspiration - 5/21/2013 Posted: 21 May 2013 05:00 PM PDT  "As a single drop of water fills a bucket so do small deeds of evil; as a single drop of water fills a bucket so do small deeds of good." ~The Buddha   Read More @ Source |
Compassion is becoming a "hot topic" in scientific research, and the good news is that compassion has been shown to be innate, and that it makes us happier, more popular, and healthier.
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