Dharma Topic: Mindfulness and the Brain

Dear Still Water Friends,

This Thursday evening, after our meditation period, Still Water regular David Martin-McCormack will facilitate a program on Mindfulness and the Brain. David's emphasis will be especially on how brain scientists and mindfulness teachers each understand how we get attached or stuck on ideas or emotions, and how we can get unstuck. This is a program that was orignially scheduled three months ago and was put aside at the last moment because of the events at Virginia Tech. David's notes are below. Please join us if you can. (The best times to join us are just before our meditation period begins at 7 pm, just before our walking meditation at 7:25, or just after our walking meditation at 7:35.)

Warm wishes,

Mitchell Ratner
Senior Teacher

David's Notes:

Unlike many of the world’s religions, Buddhism does not find a conflict with modern science. In fact, the current Dalai Lama and many very serious Buddhists argue that modern science is today validating much of what the Buddha discovered. There is a significant scientific activity by Buddhists and Buddhist scientists attempting to understand the scientific basis of the Buddha’s enlightened understanding of the world. It seems that the Buddha discovered major principles of how the brain works that are only now being understood by today’s scientific community.

This Thursday we will address some of the most important of these discoveries and how they relate to meditation practices. I have found that knowing at least some of what is happening in our brains and bodies when we meditate makes it easier to accept. For me, I find I can more readily accept a teaching when I think I know why it works than if I am just told to try it and see if it works.

We will talk about three components of our brains: 1) the ancient reptilian brain that actually gives commands to our bodies to do just about everything, 2) the more-recently-evolved part of our brain that is primarily responsible for emotions and 3) the “cognitive” part of our brain that only mammals possess.

We will talk about meditation and non-judgmental observation and why they appear to work in the context of what we know about the brain.

Finally we will talk about a Tibetan concept called “Shenpa” that roughly translates into “hooked” or “triggered”. We will go over a striking example of shenpa. We will talk about what appears to happen in the brain when we feel shenpa. And finally, we will talk about how to get unstuck and why it works.

David Martin-McCormick

From Pema Chodron, "The Shenpa Syndrome"

September 2002 dharma talk, Berkeley, CA. http://www.shambhala.org/teachers/pema/shenpa3a.php

The usual translation of the word shenpa is attachment. If you were to look it up in a Tibetan dictionary, you would find that the definition was attachment. But the word "attachment" absolutely doesn't get at what it is. Dzigar Kongtrul said not to use that translation because it's incomplete, and it doesn't touch the magnitude of shenpa and the effect that it has on us.

If I were translating shenpa it would be very hard to find a word, but I'm going to give you a few. One word might be hooked. How we get hooked.

Another synonym for shenpa might be that sticky feeling. In terms of last night's analogy about having scabies, that itch that goes along with that and scratching it, shenpa is the itch and it's the urge to scratch. So, urge is another word. The urge to smoke that cigarette, the urge to overeat, the urge to have one more drink, or whatever it is where your addiction is.

Here is an everyday example of shenpa. Somebody says a mean word to you and then something in you tightens—that's the shenpa. Then it starts to spiral into low self-esteem, or blaming them, or anger at them, denigrating yourself. And maybe if you have strong addictions, you just go right for your addiction to cover over the bad feeling that arose when that person said that mean word to you. This is a mean word that gets you, hooks you. Another mean word may not affect you but we're talking about where it touches that sore place—that's a shenpa. Someone criticizes you—they criticize your work, they criticize your appearance, they criticize your child—and, shenpa: almost co-arising....

If you catch it at that level, it's very workable. And you have the possibility, you have this enormous curiosity about sitting still right there at the table with this urge to do the habitual thing, to strengthen the habituation, you can feel it, and it's never new. It always has a familiar taste in the mouth. It has a familiar smell. When you begin to get the hang of it, you feel like this has been happening forever.

Generally speaking, however, we don't catch it at that level of just open space closing down. You're open-hearted, open-minded, and then... erkk. Right along with the hooked quality, or the tension, or the shutting down, whatever... I experience it, at the most subtle level, as a sort of tensing. Then you can feel yourself sort of withdrawing and actually not wanting to be in that place.

It causes you to feel a fundamental, underlying insecurity of the human experience that is inherent in a changing, shifting, impermanent, illusory world, as long as we are habituated to want to have ground under our feet.