In the last meditation in the sequence of the four immeasurables, equanimity, we further explore the similarities and differences in the quality of loving kindness and compassion towards different categories of people and beings. We try to focus on the underlying core similarities in the quality of these states across the different subjects of our meditations. This core quality could be described in terms of grounded joy and affection combined with tranquillity and an unconditional wish to help. The differences might have a different quality of extra affection which has an element of attachment conditioned by familiarity and preferences.
The four immeasurables can be regarded not only as practices cultivating the particular emotional qualities we have just described; they also contribute to the long-term meditation path beyond their primary role in development of compassion and associated states. For example, when we cultivate loving kindness we invite the vision of genuine happiness which is grounded in the core Buddhist teachings of the Four Noble Truths (Gethin, 1998) and Four Thoughts that turn the mind to Dharma (Rinpoche, 2013). Based on these teachings, the only form of lasting happiness results from mind training, which releases unhealthy attachments and purifies the mind from afflictions. A state of genuine balance and happiness is free from these and has the stability ensuring they do not arise again. Loving kindness practice reminds us of the possibility of lasting happiness and the way to achieve it.
Similarly, the gradients of compassion practice we have described earlier present different levels of insight into the nature of suffering: from understanding suffering in the most obvious way, through relating the observable suffering to its deeper roots in our mind, up to an experiential realization of a state which is free from suffering and from which the non-conceptual state of compassion arises continuously (Rinpoche, 2004). And both the practice of loving kindness and the practice of compassion entail an element of recognizing the law of cause and effect (karma) based on which harmful actions in the present perpetuate further cycle of suffering for those engaging in such actions. This is also the case for the practice of rejoicing where unconditional joy at others’ virtue results in our own virtue. Finally, the practice of equanimity further expands the insight aspect of meditations on the four immeasurables by examining the artificial conditioned notions of like and dislike for friends, family, strangers and enemies. In this way, the practice of equanimity supports the development of genuine bodhicitta, which in the Mahāyāna path serves as a catalyst towards striving for the highest levels of existential well-being.
The practices of the four immeasurables are also the basis for other meditation-based techniques which can be applied both in formal meditation sessions and in informal ways in everyday life. One of these techniques uses the four states of loving kindness, compassion, rejoicing and equanimity as direct antidotes towards afflictive emotions as they arise in our mind stream. In this way, loving kindness can be applied as an antidote to anger, compassion can counter unhealthy attachment, rejoicing can reduce jealousy and equanimity can neutralize self-focused pride. Specifically, in a formal meditation session, we can contemplate on the experience of anger and bring to mind a genuine wish for happiness for us and others which can put the reasons for our anger into perspective. We may realize that the reason for our anger is actually fairly negligible in the big picture, or we may find the reason for the anger is deeper and our response can take into account the broader trajectory towards lasting happiness for us and others. When we are faced with unhealthy attachment, for example to material things or recognition we crave, we can remind ourselves of deeper sources of suffering and develop compassion towards ourselves and others who have the same experience. Meditation on compassion can help us bring the cravings into perspective and use them instead as a motivation for our further meditation practice.
Similarly, rejoicing can be an excellent antidote to feelings of jealousy when we witness others’ success. Here it is important to remember to rejoice in wholesome activity and apply rejoicing in the context of broader understanding of virtue and non-virtue. Finally, when we experience success ourselves, equanimity can be a useful antidote to exaggerated self-focused pride. In this type of pride there is a sense of overemphasis on our achievement and denigration of others which lacks equanimity. To counter this imbalanced state, we can contextualize our success and remember all those who supported us in the achievement, without whom we would not have been able get where we are. We can then contemplate on our success and pride in the context of genuine loving kindness and compassion and explore how the feeling of pride compares to them and how it feeds into our sense of existential well-being.
Tonglen (Tibetan: gtong len or tonglin), the meditation on giving and taking, is another common technique which builds on and expands the practices of loving kindness, compassion, rejoicing and equanimity. It is a simple but powerful practice based on the principle that whenever we have a wholesome experience we wish all beings would experience the same, and whenever we experience suffering we wish that we and also all sentient beings who are suffering would not have to suffer any longer. The practice, just like the practice of compassion or loving kindness, can have different gradients. At the basic level, for example, whenever we have a nourishing meal or enjoy a warm drink which gives us a feeling of contentment and ease, we think of other beings and wish them to experience the same. And when we are ill, we think of others who are in the same moment feeling just like we are feeling and wish that not only us but also they would not be ill.
As we progress in our meditation practice, we can combine the basic practice of Tonglen with deeper meditations on genuine happiness and causes of suffering. In this way, when we engage in meditation and develop glimpses of unconditional loving kindness and unconditional compassion, we wish that all sentient beings would experience these balanced wholesome states. And when we are ill or witness suffering, we wish that both the obvious suffering and its deeper causes in the afflicted mind would be purified for us and for all sentient beings. At the most advanced levels of meditation practice, we sustain a state of connection with all beings all the time and the division between us and others will appear as only temporary and artificial. As a result, we continuously abide in a state of unconditional loving kindness and compassion for all beings and there is no need for explicit wishes for happiness and freedom from suffering in particular situations because the state of our mind naturally radiates these all the time.
Neuroscience of compassion and loving kindness
One line of research over the last decade showed that the pattern of neural activation associated with empathy and empathic distress is different from the brain activation linked to compassion (Singer and Klimecki, 2014). Specifically, fMRI studies on empathy repeatedly suggested activation in the anterior middle cingulate cortex and anterior insula (Lamm, Decety and Singer, 2011). In contrast, fMRI research on compassion indicated increases in activation of the medial orbitofrontal cortex and ventral striatum (Klimecki et al., 2012). These differences in brain activation patterns have been attributed to the differential emotional response to empathy and empathic distress which typically results in negative affect in comparison to compassion, which results in positive affect. Further supporting these distinctions, the same findings were reported in meditation novices who were trained first in empathy and then in compassion (Klimecki et al., 2014). In addition, the compassion-specific pattern of brain activation was confirmed in meditators experienced in compassion practice (Engen and Singer, 2015).
However, the outlined differences in brain activation between empathy and compassion are not uniformly supported across research studies. For example, an fMRI study with experienced meditators did not find the empathy/compassion dissociation (Lutz et al., 2008). In this study meditators’ brain responses were recorded while they were practicing loving kindness/compassion meditation and listening to negative, positive and neutral sounds. The findings showed greater activation in the insula in response to negative sounds than positive sou
nds in experienced meditators in comparison to novices. Increased activation in the insula was also linked to higher intensity of meditation as reported by both meditators and meditation novices. This result contradicts the findings from studies comparing empathy and compassion in novices where activation in the insula was primarily associated with empathy (Lamm, Decety and Singer, 2011), but in the current study with experienced meditators the specific location of the activation in the insula may have been slightly different (Lutz et al., 2008). In addition to these findings, a comparison between loving kindness/compassion meditation and rest indicated increased activation in other regions including the amygdala and temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) to all sound types in meditators. This finding was interpreted in terms of increased orienting, consideration and mental activity in meditators in response to emotional information which might also be linked to approach-oriented behaviour.
All the neuroscience findings which we have discussed so far were recorded while participants were engaging in a loving kindness/compassion practice. Hence, these modifications in brain function were a mix of state effects associated with the immediate meditation practice and trait changes resulting from long-term meditation practice. This raises the question whether any of these changes would also be observable if the participants were not asked to meditate while viewing emotional videos or listening to emotional sounds. To address this question, an fMRI study assessed changes in patterns of brain activation in participants after secular Mindful Attention Training (MAT) compared to secular Cognitively-Based Compassion Training (CBCT – based on Tibetan Buddhist compassion practices) (Desbordes et al., 2012). All participants were new to meditation at the start of the training. Before and after the meditation training both groups of participants (and an additional active control group) were asked to view pleasant, unpleasant and neutral images while their brain responses to these pictures were recorded. There were no meditation instructions before the pictures were viewed.
The findings from the study (Desbordes et al., 2012) showed decreases in the activation of the amygdalae in the mindfulness (MAT) group after the training in response to all three types of stimuli whereas the group which trained in compassion (CBCT) showed a trend towards increased activation in the right amygdala to negative stimuli. In So, the results also suggested that different types of meditation can impact brain responses to emotional stimuli differentially. While mindfulness training seemed to decrease reactivity to all types of emotional signals, compassion training seemed to increase orienting towards negative stimuli. Importantly, the increase in right amygdalae activation in the compassion group was associated with a decrease in depression scores in participants. This suggests that compassion training may increase exposure to negative stimuli without this having a negative impact on our emotional well-being; so the increased sensitivity to negative stimuli was in this study associated with a reduction in self-reported depression symptoms. Overall, these findings were interpreted as an indicator of differential trait shifts in the processing of emotional information resulting from mindfulness and compassion training which are observable outside of actual meditation states.
While these results suggest that compassion can lead to functional changes in the brain, research evidence on possible changes in brain structure with compassion meditation is virtually absent. However, one structural MRI study investigated possible changes in grey matter volume which could be associated with loving kindness meditation (Leung et al., 2012). The researchers compared the brain structure of meditators in the Theravada tradition who have been practicing loving kindness meditation for more than five years with brain structure of meditation novices. The findings revealed increased grey matter volume in the right angular and posterior parahippocampal gyri in meditators. The finding of structural changes in the right angular gyrus, which is part of the TPJ, is aligned with the fMRI results from the study with meditators who were listening to emotional sounds (Lutz et al., 2008). The TPJ is involved in cognitive empathy, which involves reasoning about others’ mental states. The structural changes in the posterior parahippocampal gyrus are unique to this study and the researchers suggested that they might reflect changes in emotion regulation as a result of loving kindness practice.
Other studies have found functional changes in brain activity during loving kindness meditation which were somewhat different from those reported in studies on compassion. For example, an fMRI study examined differences in strength of connections between different brain regions in experienced meditators and meditation novices while both groups were engaging in loving kindness meditation (Garrison et al., 2014). The meditators were trained in the Theravada tradition and had on average 752 hours of loving kindness practice. The findings suggested less activation in meditators in the posterior cingulate cortex/precuneus (PCC/PCu) regions, which might be a finding non-specific to loving kindness meditation, simply reflecting less mind-wandering in meditators. However, the findings also revealed increased connectivity between the PCC/PCu and the left inferior frontal gyrus in meditators whereas the novices showed more connectivity between PCC/PCu and other regions including posterior insula and parahippocampal gyrus. The researchers interpreted this finding as suggesting stronger focus on the loving kindness meditation in meditators and more self-related processing in meditation novices. However, the study also reported decreased activation in the TPJ in meditators and this was interpreted as less self-related thinking in this study; yet the previous study we have discussed interpreted larger grey matter volume in a region of TPJ as a possible positive consequence of cognitive empathy (Leung et al., 2012).
Very few studies investigated links between compassion/loving kindness practices and physiological changes. One interesting study explored a possible link between telomere length and loving kindness practice (Hoge et al., 2013). Telomeres are end parts of chromosomal sequences and their length has been associated with health outcomes – longer telomeres have been associated with less susceptibility to chronic illness. Importantly, stress has been shown to cause shorter telomere length. The study by Hoge et al. (2013) found that women who were experienced meditators in loving kindness practice had significantly longer telomeres in comparison to control participants. This result was robust even after controlling for possible interfering factors such as age and BMI and suggested that loving kindness practice may have protective effects on health which impact the cellular level of biological risk. This effect was specific to women and the overall sample including male participants showed only a trend towards significance.
Overall, the emerging picture of findings from neuroscience research on compassion and loving kindness is intriguing, but also full of inconsistencies. Whilst it is clear that compassion and loving kindness practices can result in tangible changes in the brain, and possibly also in body physiology, the exact pattern of these changes is not clear at this stage. One neuroscience approach highlights possible dissociations between empathy associated with empathic distress and compassion (Singer and Klimecki, 2014), but findings from other studies (e.g., Lutz et al., 2008) do not support this dissociation. Some studies have also reported opposite findings for changes in TPJ in loving kindness meditators with both increases and decreases in TPJ being interpreted in terms of positive effects of loving kindness meditation (Leung et al., 2012; Garrison et al., 2014).
One of the most interesting findings in the neuroscience literature on compassion is perhaps increased activation in the amygdalae during compassion practice whereas a downregulation in this region is typically observed with mindfulness practice. Amygdalae are regions of the brain involved in threat detection, so the increased activation may seem contradictory to the positive affect associated with compassion; however, it has been shown that the increase in amygdala activation is in the context of compassion practice linked to better mental health (Desbordes et al., 2012). Finally, no studies have so far directly compared brain patterns associated with different types or gradients of compassion. One study reported a
distinct pattern of changes in brain function when meditators engaged in unconditional compassion meditation (Lutz et al., 2004), however these findings were not compared to other types or gradients of compassion. Further research is needed to elucidate the neurocognitive and psychophysiological mechanisms of compassion and related states.
Compassion, self-regulation and existential well-being
We will now examine the contribution of compassion and related states to our well-being from the broader perspective of the mechanisms of meditation involving metacognitive self-regulation and existential awareness introduced in the first chapter. Compassion, loving kindness, rejoicing and equanimity are typically developed alongside calm abiding training (Shamatha). This is because they can counter difficulties associated with self-judgment and reactivity which can arise in meditation training which primarily cultivates concentration, attention control and meta-awareness. As such, training in the four immeasurables contributes to the development of processes underlying the metacognitive self-regulatory capacity (MSRC) of the mind.
However, aside from supporting the development of attention skills, compassion and related practices also selectively cultivate emotional qualities and emotion regulation strategies which enhance the MSRC further. For example, the practice of the four immeasurables develops the qualities of compassion and loving kindness that have been shown to increase positive emotions and approach-oriented unconditional pro-social behaviour (Leiberg, Klimecki and Singer, 2011). With long-term practice, this may to translate into a trait-like response to others’ suffering even outside of formal meditation. In addition, practices like Tonglen and working with the four immeasurables as antidotes to afflictions develop specific emotion regulation strategies that can be applied in everyday life to cope with emotions as they arise.
Neuroscience and Psychology of Meditation in Everyday Life Page 14