Tuesday, 13 May, 2025

Tuesday, 13 May, 2025

Did you know that an experience repeated over and over again changes and reshapes your brain? That’s what a ballerina or a pianist or an Olympic swimmer does. Practice. Brain rewires itself in response to anything that is practiced over and over again. This is called “neuroplasticity.” Such an experience expands parts of brain and leave lingering neural marks on it. 

Previously “neuroplasticity” was thought to occur only in children. In 1990’s intensive research showed that adult brain can also rewire itself. This finding challenged a long-standing dogma. The new discovery offered a scientific basis for how repeated training could create lasting mental traits in any field including contemplative practices such as meditation.

The aim of our Meditation and Journaling Practice is to cultivate wholesome mental states and weaken unwholesome ones. And also to develop insight into the nature of consciousness by observing the mind directly. The unhealthy habits such as greed, hatred, jealousy, sluggishness and self-centeredness are reduced. Eventually they are removed and replaced by healthy mental states such as awareness, self-compassion, kindness and wisdom. 

While immersed in one pointed concentration (as in meditation) or changing unwholesome feelings and thoughts into words (as in journaling), our unhealthy states are suppressed or cleared but they can emerge as strong as ever when the practicing states subside. However, repeated practices (sitting still with focus on the breath and/or pouring out our heart-mind) when stabilizes we gain confidence, clarity of mind and other wholesome mental factors. 

“The true mark of a meditator is that they have disciplined their mind by freeing it from negative emotions,” says the Dalai Lama, “What matters is not the joyous and peaceful highs on our path but who we are in our daily lives.” The Dalai Lama has made it his lifelong pursuit to obtain scientific knowledge about contemplative practices. His insight that both science and religion share common goals: “pursue truth and serve humanity” is shared by avant-gardeneuroscientists as well.