Compassion Journal

"The highest realms of thought are impossible to reach without an understanding of compassion." -Socrates
  • About
  • Compassion Journal Articles
    • Compassion in Action
    • Books
    • Science
    • Personal Stories
    • Business
    • History
    • Film
  • Masthead
  • Contact Us
You are here: Home / 2015 / Archives for August 2015

Archives for August 2015

Matthieu Ricard and the Altruism Revolution

August 15, 2015 By Carolyn Gregoire

Matthieu Ricard has lived many lives.

As a young student in Paris during the late 1960s, he was writing his dissertation in biochemistry at the prestigious Institute Pasteur. Five years later, guided by an inner stirring to explore a deeper side of life, he was living Darjeeling, India, where he had moved to study under a Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader.

After his initial departure to India in 1972, Ricard spent many years living in silent contemplation in the Himalayas. This period of retreat ended when he published The Monk and the Philosopher: A Father and Son Discuss the Meaning of Live, a book based on a series of conversations with his father, philosopher Jean-Francois Revel.

Those father-son conversations were to become the first of many dialogues between East and West that have defined Ricard’s illustrious career. The beloved monk and humanitarian continues to bridge many worlds: those of spirituality and science, East and West, ancient beliefs and modern times. He has spoken at Dharamsala and the World Economic Forum at Davos; has worked with leaders ranging from the Dalai Lama to LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner to neuroscientist Richard Davidson; and has connected with millions of people through popular TED Talks while also living a quiet life his home country of Nepal.

With his many titles — including humanitarian, best-selling author, scientist and photographer — Ricard is uniquely poised to succeed at his current project: inspiring us all to act for the benefit of others.

His latest book, Altruism: The Power of Compassion to Change Yourself and the World, runs over 600 pages and has more than 1,600 scientific references. The tour de force brings together science, religion and history to explore the nature of compassion. For Ricard, exploring altruism — the selfless concern for the well-being of others — was a natural next step after last book on happiness.

“It’s a natural effect: You are open and kind to others, and without even noticing, you are happy,” Ricard told The Huffington Post over the phone from his mother’s home in France. “If you’re only preoccupied with yourself, even though you’re trying to be happy, you turn your back to happiness and you make yourself miserable. Either you get a win-win situation or a lose-lose situation.”

matthieu ricard

Ricard argues that altruism is hard-wired into the human brain, and he describes this innate capacity to care for others as the answer to the greatest challenges facing our world today.

The book suggests that cultivating altruism on both an individual and societal level is the only way to bridge the “schizophrenic dialogue” between society’s immediate needs and its long-term interests. Where we’ve gone wrong, Ricard says, is in sacrificing the well-being of future generations and the environment in order to satisfy our present desires.

Acting with altruism is the only way to address the short-term, mid-term and long-term needs of society, Ricard told HuffPost Editor-in-Chief Arianna Huffington during a recent conversation at the publication’s New York City headquarters. “The simple notion of having more consideration for others can reconcile those three time scales,” he said.

In a competitive, individualistic culture, it’s easy to dismiss altruism as a pie-in-the-sky utopian ideal. But, Ricard argues, the ability to care about others may be the very thing that keeps our species alive.

Altruism As An Evolutionary Advantage

Scientists and philosophers have long debated whether humans are fundamentally good, or driven solely by selfishness. Academics have often struggled to find a place for altruism within the theory of Darwinian evolution — you know, the idea that individuals ruthlessly compete against each other for scarce resources, with only the strongest going on to thrive and reproduce — largely because it often implies a cost to the individual.

But the story isn’t that simple.

“Altruists should logically be the eternal losers in the struggle for life. However, that is far from the reality,” Ricard writes, noting that in our long history of living as hunter-gatherers in small cooperative tribes, mutual aid was indeed beneficial to the survival of each individual as well as the group.

He points to a large body of evidence, including the influential work of Harvard evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers, that suggests reciprocal aid is vital to the survival of a species, and that those who help others rather than fighting against them may turn out to be the evolutionary winners.

Although academics continue to argue about whether humans are naturally egoistic or altruistic, modern research has suggested that the tendency to care for others is indeed innate to human nature.

Case in point: A 2007 brain-scanning study by neuroscientists at the National Institutes of Health asked volunteers to think about a scenario in which they would either give money away to a good cause or keep it for themselves. The researchers were stunned to find that imagining giving the money away activated a primal part of the brain that normally lights up in response to food or sex — suggesting that morality is not only natural to us, but deeply pleasurable.

Your Brain On Compassion

Even if altruism is in some way hard-wired in the brain, that doesn’t mean it’s always easy for us to exercise compassion in our daily lives. Scientists are showing that through a systematic training of the mind, we can boost our capacity for empathy and compassionate behavior — and by extension, our own happiness and mental well-being.

Ricard tends to laugh off the infamous title he earned several years ago in a neuroscience study: the “happiest man in the world.” It’s not completely off-base, though. When University of Wisconsin neuroscientist Richard Davidson hooked up EEG sensors to Ricard’s brain while the monk meditated on “unconditional loving-kindness and compassion,” he recorded levels of gamma waves (which may be associated with compassion and calm attention) “never before reported in the neuroscience literature.”

It seems like the decades Ricard has spent meditating on compassion have led to measurable, and indeed extraordinary, changes in his brain.

That fact that meditation can create significant neural changes is now well-known, and a growing body of research shedding light on the benefits of compassion meditation in particular. Known as lovingkindness (“metta”) meditation, the practice that has been touted by Buddhists for over 2,500 years involves reflecting on the suffering of all living beings and wishing to relieve that suffering.

In a 2008 study conducted by positive psychologist Barbara Frederickson, 140 healthy adults who had little to no previous experience with meditation were given training in lovingkindness meditation and asked to practice 20 minutes daily for seven weeks. Compared to a control group, the new meditators reported feeling more love, serenity and joy in their daily lives. They also showed improvements in physical health, including vagal tone, a measurement of heart rate and fight-or-flight response.

At Stanford, research being conducted at the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE) is showing that compassion training, which includes lovingkindess meditation, to be effective in boosting altruism as well as improving physical and emotional well-being.

“Connecting with others in a meaningful way helps us enjoy better mental and physical health and speeds up recovery from disease,” Emma Seppala, a psychologist at Stanford and scientific director of CCARE, said. “It can even lengthen our lives.”

Citing recent brain imaging studies, Seppala added, “The reason a compassionate lifestyle leads to greater psychological well-being may be explained by the fact that the act of giving appears to be as pleasurable, if not more so, as the act of receiving.”

Based on both this modern research and ancient Buddhist wisdom, Ricard sees altruism as an important antidote to unhappiness. As the eighth-century Buddhist monk Shantideva famously said, all suffering comes from the wish for ourselves to be happy, and all happiness comes from the wish for others to be happy. Indeed, psychiatry research has shown negative self-focus to be at the root of some mental illnesses.

But selfishness is also at the core of many of the most pressing social issues of our times, Ricard argues.

“Selfishness is at the heart of most of the problems we face today: the growing gap between rich and poor, the attitude of ‘everybody for himself’ which is only increasing, and indifference about generations to come,” he writes.

By cultivating compassion, we can improve our own well-being, while also mediating not only humanitarian but also environmental crises.

“If we care for others, and for future generations, we are not going to destroy the planet we’ve been given,” Ricard says.

The Altruism Revolution

While meditation is a good first step toward cultivating compassion on a personal and social level, Ricard stresses it shouldn’t be the end goal.

“Meditation gives you more inner strength and confidence, and if you don’t feel vulnerable, you can put that to the service of others,” he said. “So it’s not just about sitting and cultivating caring mindfulness. It’s building up a way of being and then using it for the service of others.”

Ricard himself doesn’t just meditate on compassion — he’s long been putting it in action. For the past 15 years, his humanitarian foundation, Karuna Shechen, has built schools and hospitals across India, Nepal and Tibet. The organization has managed over 140 humanitarian projects in the Himalayas, and most recently focused its attention on bringing relief to thousands of Nepalis displaced by the earthquake.

Though a relatively small operation, Karuna Shechen has managed to help 220,000 people in 550 villages in Nepal, providing up to 30 days’ worth of food rations for each individual, medical assistance when needed, basic weather protection, seeds so that they can grow crops again, and offering protection to women and children who may be at risk for trafficking.

Despite the grave challenges facing the world today, Ricard remains optimistic about the influence of the ongoing “altruism revolution.”

While researching for his book, Ricard says, he noticed a widespread change in attitudes.

“I saw this shift happening in basically every discipline I encountered, from psychology to economics, through evolutionary theories,” Ricard said. “You see the revolution of the [nongovernmental organizations], that has already happened. You see vibrant sectors of the economy, like crowdfunding, impact investing, socially and environmentally responsible farming, cooperative banking, micro credit, social business. And you see more and more books on empathy and compassion. The big picture is emerging in that direction.”

More and more everyday people, too, are committing to finding small ways to make a difference in their communities, Ricard says — starting with practicing kindness.

“You can always have an impact, there are so many ways to do so,” he said. “Everyone has skills that they can put to the service of some NGOs or volunteer work. It doesn’t have to be in Sudan or the Himalayas, it can be right here in your neighborhood.”

 

This article first appeared in http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.

Filed Under: Personal Story, Practice

Six Ways Happiness Is Good for Your Health

August 15, 2015 By Kira Newman

Recently, a critical mass of research has provided what might be the most basic and irrefutable argument in favor of happiness: Happiness and good health go hand-in-hand. Indeed, scientific studies have been finding that happiness can make our hearts healthier, our immune systems stronger, and our lives longer.

Several of the studies cited below suggest that happiness causes better health; others suggest only that the two are correlated—perhaps good health causes happiness but not the other way around. Happiness and health may indeed be a virtuous circle, but researchers are still trying to untangle their relationship. In the meantime, if you need some extra motivation to get happier, check out these six ways that happiness has been linked to good health.

1. Happiness protects your heart

Love and happiness may not actually originate in the heart, but they are good for it. For example, a 2005 paperfound that happiness predicts lower heart rate and blood pressure. In the study, participants rated their happiness over 30 times in one day and then again three years later. The initially happiest participants had a lower heart rate on follow-up (about six beats slower per minute), and the happiest participants during the follow-up had better blood pressure.

Research has also uncovered a link between happiness and another measure of heart health: heart rate variability, which refers to the time interval between heartbeats and is associated with risk for various diseases. In a 2008 study, researchers monitored 76 patients suspected to have coronary artery disease. Was happiness linked to healthier hearts even among people who might have heart problems? It seemed so: The participants who rated themselves as happiest on the day their hearts were tested had a healthier pattern of heart rate variability on that day.

Over time, these effects can add up to serious differences in heart health. In a 2010 study, researchers invited nearly 2,000 Canadians into the lab to talk about their anger and stress at work. Observers rated them on a scale of one to five for the extent to which they expressed positive emotions like joy, happiness, excitement, enthusiasm, and contentment. Ten years later, the researchers checked in with the participants to see how they were doing—and it turned out that the happier ones were less likely to have developed coronary heart disease. In fact, for each one-point increase in positive emotions they had expressed, their heart disease risk was 22 percent lower.

2. Happiness strengthens your immune system

Do you know a grumpy person who always seems to be getting sick? That may be no coincidence: Research is now finding a link between happiness and a stronger immune system.

In a 2003 experiment, 350 adults volunteered to get exposed to the common cold (don’t worry, they were well-compensated). Before exposure, researchers called them six times in two weeks and asked how much they had experienced nine positive emotions—such as feeling energetic, pleased, and calm—that day. After five days in quarantine, the participants with the most positive emotions were less likely to have developed a cold.

Some of the same researchers wanted to investigate why happier people might be less susceptible to sickness, so in a 2006 study they gave 81 graduate students the hepatitis B vaccine. After receiving the first two doses, participants rated themselves on those same nine positive emotions. The ones who were high in positive emotion were nearly twice as likely to have a high antibody response to the vaccine—a sign of a robust immune system. Instead of merely affecting symptoms, happiness seemed to be literally working on a cellular level.

A much earlier experiment found that immune system activity in the same individual goes up and down depending on their happiness. For two months, 30 male dental students took pills containing a harmless blood protein from rabbits, which causes an immune response in humans. They also rated whether they had experienced various positive moods that day. On days when they were happier, participants had a better immune response, as measured by the presence of an antibody in their saliva that defends against foreign substances.

3. Happiness combats stress

Stress is not only upsetting on a psychological level but also triggers biological changes in our hormones and blood pressure. Happiness seems to temper these effects, or at least help us recover more quickly.

In the study mentioned above, where participants rated their happiness more than 30 times in a day, researchers also found associations between happiness and stress. The happiest participants had 23 percent lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol than the least happy, and another indicator of stress—the level of a blood-clotting protein that increases after stress—was 12 times lower.

Happiness also seems to carry benefits even when stress is inevitable. In a 2009 study, some diabolically cruel researchers decided to stress out psychology students and see how they reacted. The students were led to a soundproof chamber, where they first answered questions indicating whether they generally felt 10 feelings like enthusiasm or pride. Then came their worst nightmare: They had to answer an exceedingly difficult statistics question while being videotaped, and they were told that their professor would evaluate their response. Throughout the process, their heart was measured with an electrocardiogram (EKG) machine and a blood pressure monitor. In the wake of such stress, the hearts of the happiest students recovered most quickly.

4. Happy people have fewer aches and pains

Want to learn specific, research-tested steps you can take toward happiness? Check out our new site, <a href=“http://ggia.berkeley.edu/#filters=happiness”>Greater Good in Action</a>.Want to learn specific, research-tested steps you can take toward happiness? Check out our new site, Greater Good in Action.

Unhappiness can be painful—literally.

A 2001 study asked participants to rate their recent experience of positive emotions, then (five weeks later) how much they had experienced negative symptoms like muscle strain, dizziness, and heartburn since the study began. People who reported the highest levels of positive emotion at the beginning actually became healthier over the course of the study, and ended up healthier than their unhappy counterparts. The fact that their health improved over five weeks (and the health of the unhappiest participants declined) suggests that the results aren’t merely evidence of people in a good mood giving rosier ratings of their health than people in a bad mood.

A 2005 study suggests that positive emotion also mitigates pain in the context of disease. Women with arthritis and chronic pain rated themselves weekly on positive emotions like interest, enthusiasm, and inspiration for about three months. Over the course of the study, those with higher ratings overall were less likely to experience increases in pain.

5. Happiness combats disease and disability

Happiness is associated with improvements in more severe, long-term conditions as well, not just shorter-term aches and pains.

In a 2008 study of nearly 10,000 Australians, participants who reported being happy and satisfied with life most or all of the time were about 1.5 times less likely to have long-term health conditions (like chronic pain and serious vision problems) two years later. Another study in the same year found that women with breast cancer recalled being less happy and optimistic before their diagnosis than women without breast cancer, suggesting that happiness and optimism may be protective against the disease.

As adults become elderly, another condition that often afflicts them is frailty, which is characterized by impaired strength, endurance, and balance and puts them at risk of disability and death. In a 2004 study, over 1,550 Mexican Americans ages 65 and older rated how much self-esteem, hope, happiness, and enjoyment they felt over the past week. After seven years, the participants with more positive emotion ratings were less likely to be frail. Some of the same researchers also foundthat happier elderly people (by the same measure of positive emotion) were less likely to have a stroke in the subsequent six years; this was particularly true for men.

6. Happiness lengthens our lives

In the end, the ultimate health indicator might be longevity—and here, especially, happiness comes into play. In perhaps the most famous study of happiness and longevity, the life expectancy of Catholic nuns was linked to the amount of positive emotion they expressed in an autobiographical essay they wrote upon entering their convent decades earlier, typically in their 20s. Researchers combed through these writing samples for expressions of feelings like amusement, contentment, gratitude, and love. In the end, the happiest-seeming nuns lived a whopping 7-10 years longer than the least happy.

You don’t have to be a nun to experience the life-extending benefits of happiness, though. In a2011 study, almost 4,000 English adults ages 52-79 reported how happy, excited, and content they were multiple times in a single day. Here, happier people were 35 percent less likely to die over the course of about five years than their unhappier counterparts.

These two studies both measured specific positive emotions, but overall satisfaction with one’s life—another major indicator of happiness—is also linked to longevity. A 2010 study followed almost 7,000 people from California’s Alameda County for nearly three decades, finding that the people who were more satisfied with life at the beginning were less likely to die during the course of the study.

While happiness can lengthen our lives, it can’t perform miracles. There’s some evidence that the link between happiness and longevity doesn’t extend to the ill—or at least not to the very ill.

A 2005 meta-analysis, aggregating the results of other studies on health and happiness, speculates that experiencing positive emotion is helpful in diseases with a long timeline but could actually be harmful in late-stage disease. The authors cite studies showing that positive emotion lowers the risk of death in people with diabetes and AIDS, but actually increases the risk in people with metastaticbreast cancer, early-stage melanoma, and end-stage kidney disease. That increased risk might be due to the fact that happier people underreport their symptoms and don’t get the right treatment, or take worse care of themselves because they are overly optimistic.

As the science of happiness and health matures, researchers are trying to determine what role, if any, happiness actually plays in causing health benefits. They’re also trying to distinguish the effects of different forms of happiness (including positive emotions and life satisfaction), the effects of “extreme” happiness, and other factors. For example, anew study suggests that we should look not just at life satisfaction levels but life satisfaction variability: Researchers found that low life satisfaction with lots of fluctuations—i.e., an unstable level of happiness—was linked to even earlier death than low life satisfaction alone.

All that said, the study of the health benefits of happiness is still young. It will take time to figure out the exact mechanisms by which happiness influences health, and how factors like social relationships and exercise fit in. But in the meantime, it seems safe to imagine that a happier you will be healthier, too.

 

The article first appeared in http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/.

Filed Under: Lifestyle

Compassion is Guaranteed to Make You More Attractive

August 15, 2015 By Hendrie Weisinger

Flash back to ancient times, as two young cave dwellers return home from a hunt to report separately to their mates, “I didn’t do well. I caught nothing. Everyone else got something.” The cavewoman who stroked her partner’s face soothingly and said, “Don’t worry, you will be the best tomorrow. I know you will. I believe you will,” both supported him and strengthened their bond. The cavewoman who retorted, “You caught nothing?! How could you catch nothing?!” did the opposite.

Eons later, when these couples’ descendants attended a conference in Las Vegas, which do you think had a better time?

We all want to be attractive to our mate; we all want our mate to desire us. And while a look in the mirror might lead you to think you’re a beauty, if you’re an unsupportive husband or wife, you’re more likely a beast.

Being supportive to your partner when she or he is feeling down or has experienced a setback rebuilds their confidence, and it is confidence, and the positive feelings it breeds, that fuels their belief that they can rebound and be more successful tomorrow. This is one of the evolutionary functions of support: It helps people recover from adversity and increases their chances to survive. Being a supportive mate makes you moreattractive because, over time, a supportive partner is perceived as a confidence builder.

We all want to feel confident, so it is only natural that we would be attracted to people whobuild our confidence. “I couldn’t have done it without my spouse,” is an homage to the supportive partner. Being supportive to a partner makes you desirable; he or she wants to be with you because your support provides them with positive energy. And there is overwhelming contemporary research indicating that marital discord is often rooted in a lack of support.

How do you express support to your partner (or, for that matter, to your child, assistant, staff, or team)? One way is to be encouraging by making direct statements that you believe in their ability to be successful in their endeavors. Be a positive thinker for them, especially when they have setbacks—because your support helps them make a comeback.

When your partner experiences success, express pride; too many people feel threatened by a partner’s accomplishments. And when he or she comes to you with a problem or shares a troublesome situation from work or with a friend, demonstrate support by simply listening in a non-evaluative manner. Help him or her clarify and validate feelings, and help them problem solve—if asked. Too many of us respond too quickly with “solutions” or with blame for the individual for creating the plight, or are simply dismissive—“It’s not a big deal. Forget about it.”

 

The article first appeared in https://www.psychologytoday.com.

Filed Under: Opinion, Science

Archives

  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • April 2014
  • December 2013
  • September 2013
  • October 2012
  • Getting Care
  • Research
  • Education & Training
  • Community
  • About Us