Thursday, May 28, 2028
In 2002, the first Tibetan yogi tested in Dr. Richard Davidson’s lab was Mingyur Rinpoche. The number of his lifetime meditation practice hours were 62,000. His qualities of endless patience and gentle kindness truly impressed the researchers and were useful during the long and exhausting tests and the mappings of his mind.
Mingyur had to lay down in absolute stillness. EEG tracked his brain’s electrical activity and fMRI mapped the active regions in minute details.
It takes considerably longer than a few minutes to settle the mind. But for Mingyur as soon as he began the meditation, there was a sudden huge burst of electrical activity on the computer monitors displaying the signals from his brain. Everyone assumed he had moved. But he had not moved an iota. These were jaw-dropping results.
After his first brain scan, Mingyur was tested again in 2010 and 2016. Normally, the density of the grey matter decreases as we age. Most people’s brains hover around their chronological age. Mingyur’s chronological age was forty-one in 2016 but his brain scan fit most closely with thirty-three years old. This was because meditation slows the shrinkage of the key parts of the brain: at age fifty, longtime meditator’s brain is “younger” by 7.5 years compared to brains of non-meditators of the same age.
Novice meditation practitioners find some benefits of stress recovery, less mind-wanderings, better focus and working memory with fifteen minutes of daily practice. This happens within first few months. For occasional practitioners, these effects are not lasting but for long-term meditators these turn into permanent traits.
For yogis who have accumulated more than 12,000 hours of practice truly remarkable effects emerge. They have converted meditative states into traits. For most of us when we sit to meditate, concentration takes mental effort but for these yogis it is effortless. Once their attention locks with their breath or any other focus of attention their mind goes quiet while their attention stays perfectly focused. There’s coupling between heart and brain. An inner basic goodness permeates their mind and daily activities. This is Buddhachitta, the Buddha nature.
