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Dinesh

Dinesh club

Posted: 11 May 2022

Taken: 11 May 2022

1 favorite     2 comments    37 visits

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Excerpt •
The Bodhisattva's Brain •
Author •
Owen Flanagan •

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Color of Happiness

Color of Happiness

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 Dinesh
Dinesh club
“The Color of Happiness” was the title of the article I published in the British magazine ‘New Scientist’ in May 2003 that caused the media stir about happy Buddhist with happy brains. . . . I listed several widely discussed claims to the effect that there is a connection between Buddhism and happiness, specifically that Buddhists are especially happy and that it is Buddhism (rather than say the weather where Buddhists live) that produces the happiness ~ Page 37

At the time I wrote “The Color of Happiness”, the only completed brain study that existed in the connection between Buddhism and happiness had an n = 1 -- that is, one experimental subject that his brain imaged by the fMRI. This is not ordinarily considered a good sample size. However, this first exemplary individual, Mathieu Ricard www.matthieuricard.org/en was an experienced Buddhist monk (born and bred in France by very cerebral and classy parents) and his left prefrontal cortex, the area just behind the forehead, an area well established to be reliably correlated with positive emotion lit up brightly (thus the editor’s choice of “color” in the title). Indeed, his left side lit up brightly and more leftward than any individual tested in previous studies (approximately 175 subjects)> however, none of these prior studies involved people meditating while the scanning was underway (in the meditating monk’s case most meditation was on compassion and lovingkindness). These scientific problems did not prevent various media sources from announcing that scientists had established that Buddhist meditation produces (a high degree of) happiness. I do not know whether the “Joy Detectives” who, unlike me, were actually doing the preliminary studies cautioned the neurojournalists or not. ~ page 38
2 years ago.
 Dinesh
Dinesh club
...
2 years ago.

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