I OPENED Daniel Goleman and Tsoknyi Rinpoche鈥檚 Why We Meditate: 7 simple practices for a calmer mind with some scepticism. I am not a regular meditator, and while I have read a few popular books that aim to convince you of its usefulness, I have never been convinced. Questions like 鈥淗ow can I relax and stay focused on work?鈥� and 鈥淚sn鈥檛 some stress necessary for living during angsty times?鈥� prevented me from accepting meditation as a legitimate way of dealing with stress and life.
Advertisement
But Goleman and Rinpoche, a science writer-psychologist and Buddhist teacher respectively, have done something different in their book. They come armed with responses to these questions, knowing that their readers are likely to have these concerns. Rinpoche writes about how calmness doesn鈥檛 need to interfere with alertness; Goleman testifies that he balances his busy work life with regular meditation practice.
In spite of my scepticism 鈥� and the fact that I was reading this book for review, not by choice 鈥� I felt myself more and more taken with its arguments. Thoughts about how my own stressors interfere with my concentration emerged throughout the day. I realised over the following weeks that the methods Goleman and Rinpoche offer are worth thinking about, not only because they might help me through stressful times, but because they might enable us all to become more compassionate generally.
Rinpoche talks a great deal about the history of meditation and how, within its many schools of thought, love and compassion are notions we ought to champion. We need to learn 鈥� through consistent and quiet engagement with our bodies, feelings and minds 鈥� to love ourselves, and in doing so we can learn to love others.
This is underlined when Rinpoche describes feeling drawn by an advert to buy a computer, which brought temporary relief from a hollowness that was plaguing him. Similar feelings drive so many of our behaviours, but the authors think this can be filled only through self-understanding, not consumption.
Goleman backs up many of Rinpoche鈥檚 discussions of meditation with evidence from the psychological and medical sciences. Only recently, Goleman writes, have researchers integrated meditation practices that originate in Asia with clinical psychology, with positive results. The medical benefits appear extraordinary, too: people who meditate have less physiological and genetic evidence of stress, and seem at a lower risk for a variety of ailments.
Each chapter is a kind of antidote for the scepticism I think many people feel about meditation. Rinpoche shows you that meditation isn鈥檛 just some smug self-help practice that isn鈥檛 compatible with the busyness of modern life, which he has experienced himself. Goleman shows that the practices Rinpoche describes don鈥檛 just bring short-term cognitive benefits. Together, the pair give valid reasons to meditate, ones that sceptical rationalists can鈥檛 just ignore.
At times, though, the science doesn鈥檛 always seem sound. Goleman talks about our evolutionary history in an unconvincing way. Anxiety isn鈥檛, as I think he assumes, just a maladapted version of the fight-or-flight response, for example. Social pressures have always been integral to being human. We don鈥檛 just worry about our social and work lives at 3am because of some evolutionary hangover 鈥� we stress because society is stressful.
For me, the amygdala region of the brain (dealing with decision-making, memory-making and emotional responses) features too often in the science sections of the book. In fact, referring to the amygdala started to feel more like a mantra than scientific justification for meditation.
And yet I find myself convinced by much of what both Rinpoche and Goleman say. In the final chapter, they suggest that readers commit to regular meditation. As a former sceptic, I am happy to say I will do so 鈥� and to recommend that you read this book.
Jonathan R. Goodman is at the Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies in the UK
