The Shamatha Project

The trend of western scientific institutes recognizing the potential of eastern meditation practices continues with...

The Shamatha Project

"This unique study includes a detailed longitudinal examination of the neural, cognitive, and socio-emotional effects of intensive training in Shamatha meditation, aimed at enhancing the stability and vividness of attention. The research team includes experts in the cognitive and neuroscientific study of attention, visualization, cognitive control, and sensori-motor processing; emotion and mental health; compassionate, prosocial behavior; longitudinal statistical analyses; and Buddhism. Several of the investigators are skilled in the use of modern, noninvasive neuro-imaging techniques; most have been engaged for years in conferences, seminars, and work groups related to establishing conceptual and methodological connections between Buddhist practice, psychological science, and neuroscience.

The research project will be coordinated by the Center for Mind and Brain at the University of California, Davis, headed by Dr. George R. Mangun, an international leader in the cognitive neuroscience of attention. I am organizing the meditation training.

According to the Buddhist tradition, the achievement of Shamatha involves a state of sustained, voluntary attention, characterized by exceptional stability and vividness, which can be sustained effortlessly for at least four hours.

The proposed project will involve assessment of both cognitive and socio-emotional variables at several points in time across the one-year study. Behind the specific assessments lie two major questions:

* How plastic, or subject to training, are the cognitive and socio-emotional skills we assess behaviorally?
* What measurable brain changes underlie the behavioral (performance) changes?

The Shamatha Project is expected to have a number of benefits for the study participants, for many others interested in the techniques explored, and for an array of psychological and neuroscientific disciplines that study attention, emotion, emotion regulation, and personal development.

Our brain-imaging and behavioral findings should be useful for treating people with a variety of cognitive and emotional disorders, such as ADHD, anxiety, depression, excessive anger, and insomnia. All of these mental problems are closely related to the ability to control attention and regulate emotion. We expect that relatively soon after the Shamatha training begins, measurable changes will occur in these abilities, suggesting that certain aspects of the training could be relatively easily incorporated into daily life situations for persons outside a retreat setting.

For the proposed study, participants will reside in a contemplative research facility, optimally suited for scientific and contemplative research, over a twelve-month period. The training program will emphasize:

* training in mindfulness of breathing to induce relaxation of the body and mind and develop the stability and vividness of attention;
* training in "settling the mind in its natural state," in which one observes mental events without distraction and without grasping;
* training in "Shamatha without an object," in which the attention rests simply in being aware of being aware, with no other object."

[via cadmus