Asian Traditions of Meditation

by Halvor Eifring

  Yáng, Rúbīn 楊儒賓. “Sòngrú de jìngzuòshuō” 宋儒的靜坐説. In Yáng Rúbīn 楊儒賓, Rújiā zhéxué 儒家哲学. Taipei: Guìguān túshū gǔfèn yǒuxiàn gōngsī, 2004.

  ———. “Zhǔ jìng yǔ zhǔ jìng” 主敬與主靜. In Dōngyǎ de jìngzuò chuántǒng, edited by Yáng Rúbīn 楊儒賓, Mabuchi Masaya 馬淵昌也, and Halvor Eifring 艾皓德, 129–159. Taipei: National Taiwan University Press, 2012.

  Yán Jūn jí 顔鈞集. Beijing: Zhōngguó shèhuì kēxué chūbǎnshè, 1996.

  Zhào Bǎofēng jí 趙寶峰集. Universal Library online edition.

  Zhōng, Cǎijūn 鍾彩鈞. “Tàizhōu xuézhě Yán Shānnóng de sīxiǎng yǔ jiǎngxué: Rúxué mínjiānhuà yǔ zōngjiàohuà” 泰州學者顔山農的思想與講學－ 儒學民間化與宗教化. Zhōngguó zhéxué 中國哲學 19 (1998).

  12 ARE HOLEN

  The Science of Meditation

  In contrast to the rest of the volume, this chapter is devoted to popular meditation practices rather than to traditional meditations; its textual sources are mostly in English rather than in Asian languages. Nevertheless, the forms of meditation discussed originate from Asian traditions, though the practices may have been significantly transformed by their entry into Western modernity. In a sense, therefore, this chapter serves as a natural last chapter of a volume on Asian traditions of meditation.

  Like most of the volume, this chapter is mainly concerned with cultural history. Its focus involves scientific studies, but not to assess the strength of the measurable outcome and methodology. Rather, it deals with the scientific studies as a source of inspiration for the emerging meditative cultures. It takes the stance that the shifting foci of meditation research during half a century have been swayed by three major factors: the larger sociocultural context or societal orientation, the availability of advanced scientific methodology, and, finally, the inherent qualities of the various meditation practices.

  Modern Meditation Cultures

  Modern cultures of meditation, widely popularized and partly or fully dislodged from their traditional contexts, have emerged in several parts of the world. In Europe and America, the most famous examples are the Transcendental Meditation (TM) movement with its many offshoots, as well as the different versions of Zen and Mindfulness. In Asia, several modernized forms of meditation have also emerged, but quite independently of the Euro-American development; we are referring to the Vipassana movement in Sri Lanka and Burma,1 Quiet Sitting in Japan and China,2 and Subud and Sumarah in Indonesia.3

  Scientific and pseudoscientific rhetoric has gradually become central in many such movements. Placing meditation outside its traditional contexts has often replaced the religious content and aims with the technical aspects of the practice and its utility in coping with modern life. Several movements have underscored the health and stress-reduction effects of meditation rather than the traditional religious and spiritual goals. Moreover, the authority of science has often been used to validate the traditional teaching. Some movements regard scientific findings as supporting their traditional religious tenets and practices embodying deep truths. Positions of this kind have often been couched in pseudoscientific language and argue that the traditions represent a different kind of science, of equal or even superior validity.

  When it comes to the actual publication of meditation studies in recognized scientific journals, Anglo-American scientists have dominated the arena, as they do in many other fields. However, in these various waves of meditation research, the kinds of meditation investigated have been almost exclusively of Asian origin. The largest review to date on the health effects of meditation is from 2007 and refers exclusively to methods of Asian origin.4 Thus, although the word “meditation” comes from European contexts, meditative practices of Christian, Judaic, or Islamic backgrounds have generally not found their way into scientific studies. The cultural history of meditation science, therefore, displays an extraordinary fusion of Asian and Western concerns.

  In most cases, the dominance of Asian practices in scientific studies is probably due to some common characteristics; these practices are effective even without their religious content. Christian, Judaic, and Islamic meditative practices, however, are strongly content-oriented—whether devotional, scriptural, or thematic—and are thus confined to the religious contexts in which they are embedded; they cannot easily be decontextualized or recontextualized in new environments. In contrast, many Asian forms of meditation have a stronger generic and technical element; their effects often instigate psychophysiological mechanisms in the body and in the central nervous system that are relatively independent of their religious or cultural context. Therefore, they are also more readily transferred from one context to another. Tellingly, Asian meditative traditions may also include a large number of content-oriented practices, but it is worth noting that these have seldom been the objects of scientific investigation or transcultural dissemination. Hard-core science prefers common techniques to cultural or religious content.

  A Brief History

  According to Web of Science, an online scientific citation indexing service,5 scholarly interest in the psychological aspects of meditation can be traced back to the 1930s, and if Yoga is included, back to the 1920s. However, for a long time the only place this interest showed up was in book reviews, and usually reviews of books that were of popular rather than of scholarly interest. The reviews appeared mostly in scholarly journals devoted to psychology or psychiatry, and were usually concerned with Buddhist meditation or, less often, with the Yoga tradition. Not a single scientific journal publication on meditation was cited before the 1960s.

  In the counterculture of the 1960s, meditation suddenly gained enormous popularity in Europe and in the English-speaking world. Initially, this had a limited visible impact on the science of meditation. A rather popular book on meditation, by Mahesh Yogi, appeared in 1963 and was titled The Science of Being and Art of Living. However, the use of the word “science” in the title was rhetorical; it was hardly meant to reflect scientific substance. The 1960s saw a few scientific publications on meditation, but not many, and these mainly pursued an interest in the psychological aspects of Buddhist meditation. Some of the articles, however, presaged a more experimental and physiological trend. In the first half of the decade, Arthur Deikman, who later wrote a popular book on the psychology of Buddhist meditation, The Observing Self, published two meditation studies, one of them titled “Experimental Meditation.”6 Two Japanese scholars published the first study of meditation using EEG (electroencephalography), which focused on Zen meditation.7

  Beyond such scattered papers, the first big wave of scientific interest in meditation started with Robert Keith Wallace and Herbert Benson’s influential studies from the early 1970s, which were published in scientific journals, conference proceedings, and popular magazines.8 The number of meditation studies increased quickly, until it reached a first peak in 1977–1978. Popular and scientific interest in meditation was reinforced in 1975 with the appearance of Benson’s book The Relaxation Response, which topped the New York Times bestseller list for nonfiction just before Christmas that year.9 Nearly all of the meditation studies that were frequently cited during this decade focused on Transcendental Meditation.10 Research interest in Buddhist methods and psychological issues continued to some extent; the field also included a few studies of other methods, from Ananda Marga to Yoga. The dominant trend clearly involved physiological and clinical studies of TM and related practices. A variety of results of meditation were explored, from antidrug effects to brain physiology, but the main focus was on effects that could be subsumed under Benson’s notion of the “relaxation response,” an array of measurable stress-reducing physiological changes in the body signifying changes in the central nervous system; the relaxation response was conceived as the opposite of the fight-or-flight response that is linked to stress.

  In the mid-1970s, the general popularity of TM began to decline, partly due to its stron
g association with the waning counterculture, but also due to its claims of being able to teach people how to levitate and other such extraordinary assertions. The effect of this decline on the rate of scientific publications was not immediate. Near the end of the 1970s, however, the number of meditation studies began to decrease and continued to do so for about a decade.11 Rather critical voices also emerged that argued against some of the studies—in particular against their promotional nature, low data quality, and poor research designs—but also against the TM movement’s use of them. In 1984, David S. Holmes published a negative review of meditation studies that was followed by a number of papers contesting some of his critical views.12 Scientific articles on the relaxation-related effects of TM continued to appear, but the upward trend had peaked, and studies of other types of meditation and effects gradually increased in number and importance.

  The latter half of the 1970s saw the appearance of articles by scholars who would become central to the scientific study and popular dissemination of Buddhist-inspired forms of meditation, including Richard Davidson and Daniel Goleman.13 In the early 1980s, two articles by Jon Kabat-Zinn mentioned Mindfulness Meditation for the first time in the research literature.14 Stress reduction, chronic pain, and a number of other clinical issues continued to be central concerns in the studies of the 1980s and 1990s. At this point, the basis for the effects of meditation was linked less to the physiological aspects of relaxation, and more to attentional, belief-related, and emotional changes.

  In 1989, the number of scientific meditation studies began to rise again.15 This reflected a new upswing in popular interest, as meditation began to break out of its counterculture image. In the 1990s, several best-selling books contributed to this popularization of meditation. Most notably, two books by Jon Kabat-Zinn, Full Catastrophe Living and Wherever You Go, There You Are, paved the way for what would become the mindfulness movement. These books were not primarily concerned with scientific research, but the author’s background as a successful American researcher defused the public perception of meditation as deriving from Indian gurus of the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s. Daniel Goleman’s main claim to fame, his book Emotional Intelligence, did not mention meditation, but both his earlier and his later books did.16 James H. Austin, a neurologist and prolific popularizer of Zen, published his first and most famous book, Zen and the Brain, in 1998.

  After 2000, the scientific study of Mindfulness became a clear trend. Among the fifty most-cited meditation studies at that time, twenty-seven had “mindfulness” in the title, while no other single technique appeared in more than one or two titles. Undoubtedly, several studies discussed Mindfulness without including it in the title. At least seven studies discussed other forms of Buddhist-inspired meditation. Not a single one of those top fifty publications had TM in the title.

  The Mindfulness trend went hand in hand with a renewed interest in the brain triggered by the novel technologies of neuroimaging, the fMRI and the PET scan. Among the fifty most-cited meditation studies after 2000, at least fourteen studied the impact of meditation on the brain. The appearance in the year 2000 of a study on functional brain mapping and the relaxation response represents an almost symbolic step from the first to the second phase of meditation research.17 This study, undertaken by Sara W. Lazar and her co-workers, stands at the end of a long trend of exploring the effects of meditation in terms of the relaxation response. At the same time, it introduces a new and still ongoing trend of using neuroimaging techniques in the study of meditation, in particular Mindfulness, and, to a much lesser extent, other forms of Buddhist-inspired practices.

  Lately, meditation studies have entered what has been termed “the era of the wandering mind,”18 reflecting the discovery that mind wandering or stimulus-independent thought is linked to the so-called default-mode network of the brain.

  While the study of Mindfulness practices is a clear trend in terms of sheer numbers, other methods continue to be studied, including loving-kindness meditation, insight meditation, Tibetan Buddhist meditation, TM, Yoga, Qigong, Acem Meditation, and others.19 The use of neuroimaging techniques has shed light on many new issues, and other approaches continue to be explored, including a large number of clinical studies and a moderate number of physiological studies. Although the relaxation response no longer is the main focus of research, this does not mean that relaxation is not an issue. On the contrary, it is still one of the key issues regarding the effects of meditation.

  In the following, we shall look at several trends within the scientific research on meditation. These trends may be seen as different meditative cultures that exist not in isolation but in constant interaction with other cultures, both meditative and nonmeditative, scientific and nonscientific.

  From Psychodynamic to Cognitive Therapy

  To the extent that we can speak of trends in the rather limited scientific interest in meditation before 1970, it must be in reference to its psychotherapeutic orientation, which reflects a strong interest in psychoanalysis and its later psychodynamic forms during much of the twentieth century.

  According to Web of Science, the first two scientific journal items on “meditation” appeared in 1936, as already mentioned. Both were reviews of a popular book on Buddhist meditation that itself revealed no particular interest in science.20 One of the reviews was rather brief, and simply concluded, “I do not think many will follow the author on this path.”21 The other reviewer, however, was concerned with “the psychotherapeutic implications of Buddhist practice.” The issue raised was whether replacing thoughts of ill will with thoughts of benevolence, as recommended by a Buddhist master, would easily become “the pathway to a reaction formation.” “Reaction formation” is one of the traditional Freudian defense mechanisms; it is seen as a way of restricting unacceptable desires and instead developing exaggerated behaviors of the opposite kind. In the review, the suggestion was made that the Buddhist notion of tanha, “desire,” could be restated in Freudian terms as “faultily attached libido.” Despite such objections to Buddhist ideals, it argues also that Buddhist meditation “creates a situation rather like free association,” in line with psychoanalysis.22

  A similar interest in the psychotherapeutic implications of Yoga has been around for some time, starting with an article, “Psychoanalysis and Yoga,” that appeared in 1925.23 One of the issues discussed was whether or not Yoga could be seen as a form of self-hypnosis. In the context of Indian philosophy, a discourse on this matter had resolved the question in the negative almost a millennium earlier.24

  In the 1950s, a number of leading psychoanalysts often referred to as the neo-Freudians, most notably Karen Horney and Erich Fromm, showed a strong interest in Zen meditation.25 Both Horney and Fromm became personally acquainted with the leading transmitter of Japanese Zen to the West, Daisetz T. Suzuki, whom Horney had quoted in one of her earlier books.26 The collection of essays on Zen Buddhism and psychoanalysis published by Fromm in collaboration with Suzuki and Robert De Martino in 1960, Zen Buddhism, became a classic in its field. In the book, Fromm argues that psychoanalysis may lead to the same kind of maturation and enlightenment as Zen meditation. The general trend, both in the book and in the period as a whole, was to seek in Zen what psychoanalysis and Western thought in general were believed to be missing: a way for ordinary people to deepen their life experience, rather than just a way for the neurotic mind to get rid of its symptoms.

  In the 1970s, studies of the psychotherapeutic effects of meditation were far outnumbered by the new wave of physiological studies. At the same time, however, studies of psychotherapeutic effects also increased, with more stringent methods, including behavioral self-control,27 empathy in counselors,28 measures of self-actualization,29 anxiety reduction,30 and a number of other issues.31 It is worth noting that studies of psychotherapeutic effects more often involved Buddhist techniques, perhaps due to the strong skepticism in, for example, the TM movement, of psychology and its ways of working. The initiators of the TM mov
ement were for a long time forbidden to teach TM to psychoanalysts.

  In the 1970s, psychoanalytic thinking was less dominant yet still influential. A new field, cognitive psychology, was beginning to make its mark. The scholarly interest in Mindfulness and other Buddhist-inspired practices that started in the 1980s and gained momentum in the twenty-first century brought with it a stronger cognitive orientation. This reflected a general shift in the focus on meditation in academic psychology and in clinical psychotherapy, and also in the types of meditation techniques that were investigated. Compared to the physiological focus of the relaxation-oriented practices that dominated the 1970s, the Buddhist-inspired methods were often more concerned with the regulation and monitoring of the attention and the emotions, which fits well with the more openly persuasive and manipulative methods of cognitive therapy. In the past decade or two, this cognitive orientation has frequently been combined with brain studies, to which we shall return shortly.

  In 1979, Kabat-Zinn began teaching his patients what he called Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), a combination of Mindfulness meditation, Yoga, and other mental and physical exercises. The program was primarily designed not to cure illness but to teach patients how to live with it. In the 1990s, Zindel Segal, Mark Williams, and John Teasdale developed a related approach called Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) specifically to aid patients in their recovery from depression. A number of scientific studies have investigated the influence of these programs on patients’ mood disorders, stress symptoms, and fatigue.

  The Relaxation Response

  The first big wave of scientific interest in meditation that began in 1970 arose directly from the popularity of meditation in the counterculture of the 1960s. The main emphasis of this research was on the physiological changes associated with what Herbert Benson termed the “relaxation response.” This response is regarded as the opposite of the fight-or-flight response associated with stress and involving the activation of the sympathetic part of the autonomous nervous system. Nowadays, the relaxation response is often explained by changes in the HPA axis (HPA refers to the hypothalamus and pituitary gland in the brain, and the adrenal gland on top of the kidneys).