dharmadoctors.org

Apr 15, 2010

Khenpo Tsering of the Surmang Monastery was able to call Lyndon Comstock of the Konchok Foundation to report on the devastation in the Surmang area. The
full report of their call is below.

Khenpo said that Jyekundo (the closest city to Surmang) is “completely destroyed.” He said that probably 95% of the buildings in the city have been destroyed. He said that, if anyone has seen the movie “2012,” it looks like that. Even some of the more recent larger buildings collapsed. He said that a six or seven story building collapsed “like the World Trade Center.”

Khenpo said that about eight hundred bodies that have been pulled out of the rubble so far but “there are thousands more bodies still buried in the collapsed buildings.”

Surmang Dutsi Til was not seriously affected by the earthquake. He has not been there in this first day since the earthquake but he was told that the earthquake was not so large there (Surmang is much further from the epicenter than Jyekundo is). He was told that no one was injured at Surmang Dutsi Til, and that several buildings have cracks in them from the earthquake, but none collapsed. He was told that there was no damage at all to the new shedra building complex at Surmang, which he described as very strongly built compared to how other buildings are constructed in the region.

Trungpa XII Rinpoche is at Derge right now, which was not affected by the earthquake. Damcho Tenphel Rinpoche was at Kyere and most of the family members of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche are in that area, which was not affected by the earthquake. However, several of the Vidyadhara’s nieces or nephews have been living in Jyekundo and Khenpo has no news yet of what has happened to them.

Thrangu monastery was the monastery most severely damaged by the earthquake from the reports that Khenpo has received. He was told that it is “95% destroyed” and that many monks there are dead, but no one yet knows how many.

Khenpo asked Lyndon to tell the Shambhala sangha that, if we are able to send money, that would be very helpful, because everyone who was involved in this earthquake needs help. He is going to find the Surmang families first to see how he can help them but there are many people who need help. Everyone who was living in Jyekundo has lost their house and has had people close to them who was killed or injured.

Lee Weingrad, director of the Surmang Foundation was interviewed by BBC TV and Radio (BBC World Report) to speak for their foundation and the NGO community. He reports: “The tone was very open and dignified and I think we can say a lot by not pretending to have anything other than a broken heart as the basis for fearlessly helping the victims of the unspeakable tragedy. There might be another interview tonight Beijing time and if there is, I’ll be sure to give some advance warning.”

The Konchok Foundation has set up a disaster relief fund so that sangha members or others who wish to offer support can do so.
http://www.konchok.org Donations can be made from anywhere by credit card or from the U.S. or Canada by check. Donations will be forwarded to Khenpo Tsering of the Surmang monastery for distribution.

Please recall compassionately in your daily practice all those who have been killed, injured, or left homeless by the earthquake.

For further information:
Konchok Foundation http://www.konchok.org
Surmang Foundation http://www.surmang.org

Apr 14, 2010

MAJOR EARTHQUAKE NEAR SURMANG MONASTERY

A huge earthquake struck Jyekundo yesterday, the closest city to the Surmang Dutsi Til monastery, where Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche was the supreme abbot before leaving Tibet. The initial quake of 7.1 magnitude was followed by several aftershocks of magnitude 5 or more.

Most communications with Jyekundo are now down but first reports indicate heavy damage and large numbers of people killed or injured. Reports say that possibly as many as 90% of the homes in the city have been destroyed.

The Vidyadhara’s brother, Damcho Tenphel Rinpoche, often resides in Jyekundo. It is not known if he was in Jyekundo at the time of the quake. He was not living in the city a month ago.

The Konchok Foundation, started by Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, Lady Diana Mukpo and others to rebuild the monastic college (shedra) at Surmang, is gathering information on the disaster. Also working to gather information is the Surmang Foundation, of which sangha member Lee Weingrad is the director, which provides medical care in the region.

Khenpo Tsering Gyurme of Surmang monastery called the Konchok Foundation from the nearby city of Xining. He had been there purchasing building materials for the Surmang shedra project. He said he was heading immediately for Jyekundo to help with the rescue efforts. Many members of his own family live in Jyekundo.

The U.S. Geological Survey reports place the epicenter approximately 30 miles northwest of Jyekundo (Yushu). It will probably be some days before any information is available about Surmang Dutsi Til, which is south of Jyekundo.

Khenpo Gawang, known to many in the Shambhala Mandala, has a school in the area. We are told that eight of the children in the school have been
killed.

Lee Weingrad has mentioned reports of damage at the Venerable Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche’s monastery in the affected area. The damage to Thrangu Rinpoche’s monastery has been confirmed by Shirley Blair, Director of Thrangu Rinpoche’s schools for Himalayan children. She reports at least 10 dead and says the shedra collapsed, so there may be many more casualties.

The Sakyong, now in secluded retreat in Nepal, has been informed through his personal attendant.

Lady Diana and Dr Mitchell Levy, two of the founders of the Konchok Foundation, said today: We are deeply concerned for the people of this entire area, which includes the Surmang monasteries of which Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche was the supreme abbot. We have been working to support Surmang and its surrounding community for many years and we would like to do whatever we can to assist those affected by the earthquake. If anyone is able to contribute to the disaster relief fund being sent up by the Konchok Foundation, which is able to channel money direct to the area through the Surmang monastery, please do so, and include the people of this desperately poor area in your prayers and practice.

The Konchok Foundation has set up a disaster relief fund so that sangha
members or others who wish to offer support can do so.
http://www.konchok.org/

Donations can be made from anywhere by credit card or from the U.S. or Canada by check. Donations will be forwarded to Khenpo Tsering of the Surmang monastery for distribution.

Please recall compassionately in your daily practice all those who have been killed, injured, or left homeless by the earthquake.

For further information:
Konchok Foundation:http://www.konchok.org/
Surmang Foundation:http://www.surmang.org/

Cogn Process. 2010 Feb;11(1):1-7

Raffone A, Srinivasan N.

PMID: 20041276

Fredrickson, B. L., Cohn, M. A., Coffey, K. A., Pek, J., & Finkel, S. M. (2008).  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1045-1062.

B. L. Fredrickson’s (1998, 2001) broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions asserts that people’s daily experiences of positive emotions compound over time to build a variety of consequential personal resources. The authors tested this build hypothesis in a field experiment with working adults (n = 139), half of whom were randomly-assigned to begin a practice of loving-kindness meditation. Results showed that this meditation practice produced increases over time in daily experiences of positive emotions, which, in turn, produced increases in a wide range of personal resources (e.g., increased mindfulness, purpose in life, social support, decreased illness symptoms). In turn, these increments in personal resources predicted increased life satisfaction and reduced depressive symptoms. Discussion centers on how positive emotions are the mechanism of change for the type of mind-training practice studied here and how loving-kindness meditation is an intervention strategy that produces positive emotions in a way that outpaces the hedonic treadmill effect. (c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved.

PMID: 18954193

Hutcherson, C. A., Seppala, E. M., & Gross, J. J. (2008).  Emotion, 8, 720-724.

The need for social connection is a fundamental human motive, and it is increasingly clear that feeling socially connected confers mental and physical health benefits. However, in many cultures, societal changes are leading to growing social distrust and alienation. Can feelings of social connection and positivity toward others be increased? Is it possible to self-generate these feelings? In this study, the authors used a brief loving-kindness meditation exercise to examine whether social connection could be created toward strangers in a controlled laboratory context. Compared with a closely matched control task, even just a few minutes of loving-kindness meditation increased feelings of social connection and positivity toward novel individuals on both explicit and implicit levels. These results suggest that this easily implemented technique may help to increase positive social emotions and decrease social isolation. (c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved

PMID: 18837623

Black, D. S., Milam, J., & Sussman, S. (2009).  Pediatrics. 124(3), e532-e541.

This article reviewed empirical studies on the effects of sitting- meditative practices in
school, clinic, and community settings for youth ages 6 to 18 years. The review was motivated
by a growing body of research that documents positive health and cognitive outcomes among
adults. The purpose of the present review was to determine the state of empirical research
related to sitting-meditation interventions for youth. Only those studies that prominently
featured sitting meditation were included. Other criteria for inclusion in the review were: 1) study
participants were younger than 18 years of age, 2) there was a quantitative health-related or
psychosocial outcome, 3) interventions were delivered in schools community, or clinic settings,
and 4) study results were published in a peer-reviewed, English-language journal. Studies that
primarily focused on movement-based practices such as yoga or tai chi were not included as the
effects of meditation could not be easily separated from those associated with physical exertion.
In addition, case studies with a single participant were excluded.
The review comprised 16 studies, published between 1982 to 2008, that met these criteria. A
variety of meditation styles were represented including mindfulness meditation,
transcendental meditation, mindfulness-based stress reduction, and mindfulness-based
cognitive therapy. When possible effect sizes were calculated for studies that compared a
treatment and control group. The results of studies were clustered and presented
according to physiological outcomes and psychosocial/behavioral outcomes. Studies that
examined physiological outcomes (n=5) provided meditation sessions for 10-15 minutes, twice
daily, for 2-4 months. Those that examined psychosocial/behavioral outcomes (n=11) provided
sessions from 5 minutes to 2.5 hours, 1-2 times per day, from 4 weeks to 4 months.
Physiological outcomes included blood pressure, heart rate, and cardiac output. Studies that
assessed physiology were primarily conducted among African American adolescents. Studies
showed some support for the efficacy of meditation on physiological outcomes, with median
effect sizes ranging from 0.16 to 0.29. Primary psychosocial/behavioral outcomes included
anxiety, depressive symptoms, behavior problems, and inattention. Studies showed the most
support for reductions in anxiety and behavior problems as a function of meditation training.
Median effect sizes across psychosocial/behavioral studies ranged from .27 to .70. Average
participant compliance (attendance to treatment) and retention (completing survey
measures) across all studies was moderately high at 77% and 84%, respectively. This review
found meditation to have beneficial effects across physiologic, psychosocial, and behavior
outcomes. However, more randomized control trials with larger and diverse samples in a
variety of treatment settings are needed to clarify the treatment efficacy of sittingmeditation
among youth.

Psychoneuroendocrinology, 34, 87-98; Pace, T. W. W., Negi, L. T., Adame, D. D., Cole, S. P., Sivilli, T. I., Brown, T. D., Issa, M. J., & Raison, C.L. (2009).

Meditation practices may impact physiological pathways that are modulated by stress and relevant to disease. While much attention has been paid to meditation practices that emphasize calming the mind, improving focused attention, or developing mindfulness, less is known about meditation practices that foster compassion. Accordingly, the current study examined the effect of compassion meditation on innate immune, neuroendocrine and behavioral responses to psychosocial stress and evaluated the degree to which engagement in meditation practice influenced stress reactivity. Sixty-one healthy adults were randomized to 6 weeks of training in compassion meditation (n=33) or participation in a health discussion control group (n=28) followed by exposure to a standardized laboratory stressor (Trier social stress test [TSST]). Physiologic and behavioral responses to the TSST were determined by repeated assessments of plasma concentrations of interleukin (IL)-6 and cortisol as well as total distress scores on the Profile of Mood States (POMS). No main effect of group assignment on TSST responses was found for IL-6, cortisol or POMS scores. However, within the meditation group, increased meditation practice was correlated with decreased TSST-induced IL-6 (r(p)=-0.46, p=0.008) and POMS distress scores (r(p)=-0.43, p=0.014). Moreover, individuals with meditation practice times above the median exhibited lower TSST-induced IL-6 and POMS distress scores compared to individuals below the median, who did not differ from controls. These data suggest that engagement in compassion meditation may reduce stress-induced immune and behavioral responses, although future studies are required to determine whether individuals who engage in compassion meditation techniques are more likely to exhibit reduced stress reactivity.

PMID: 18835662

The Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE) at Stanford University has announced a conference on the Language of Mental Life scheduled for July 7-9, 2010 during which western scientists will meet with Buddhist scholars to create a lexicon for better understanding the key terms of mental life.

In the past few decades, improvements in neuro-imaging tools have led to the expansion of the fields of cognitive and affective science. One aspect of this development has been the interface with Buddhist contemplative tradition, which has a long history of systematic enquiry into the nature and functions of the human mind.

Together with this scientific enquiry, the Buddhist contemplative tradition has also developed a series of contemplative practices, a kind of mental training exercises, aimed at development and training of specific qualities of the human mind. CCARE’s conference in Telluride brings together western scientists with eastern scholars to develop the key terms associated with the human mind, which will aid in the development of contemplative practices.

Twelve scientists and scholars of different disciplines will gather in Telluride to brainstorm and discuss the taxonomy of their mental language and its development, along with how the key mental terms are defined and applied. A committee will then assemble a list of key terms to be discussed and refined over the course of the conference. The results will be made available to scholars and the public as an online lexicon.

The conference is being sponsored by the Fetzer Institute, without whom this endeavor would not be possible. The Fetzer Institute is committed to creating and supporting projects to engage with people and spread knowledge about how individuals can be more loving and forgiving in daily life, and showing how to use the power of love and forgiveness to serve as healing forces in a divided world. CCARE is very grateful for the generous support of the Fetzer institute.

CCARE is an initiative within the Stanford Institute of Neuro-Innovation and Translational Neurosciences bringing together a multi-disciplinary team that includes psychologists, social scientists, neuroscientists and contemplatives from a number of traditions to rigorously examine the social, moral and neural bases of compassion and altruism and methods to cultivate such behaviors.

Thursday, April 1st, 2010; Munzer Auditorium, Stanford University

Together with Alan Wallace and three-dozen collaborating researchers, we are investigating how attentional, emotional and physiological processes change over the course of three months of intensive training in meditative quiescence and emotional balance, in a study known as “The Shamatha Project.” Scientific measures include established paradigms in cognitive and affective neuroscience, stress and affiliation-related biomarkers, EEG, autonomic physiology, facial expressions of emotion, self report, daily journaling, and structured interviews. Our initial findings demonstrate improvements in adaptive psychological attributes, perceptual and attention-related skills, improvements in inhibiting habitual responses, decreased mind-wandering, changes in the emotional response to the perception of human suffering, and changes in biomarkers associated with cellular repair. Together, these findings demonstrate wide-ranging benefits of the retreat experience. These findings will be discussed in the context of theoretical and methodological issues involved in conducting research in contemplative practice.

Clifford Saron, Ph.D., is currently an Associate Research Scientist and core faculty member at the Center for Mind and Brain of the University of California at Davis (http://mindbrain.ucdavis.edu), and faculty member of the UC Davis M.I.N.D. Institute. He received his Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 1999 studying interhemispheric visuomotor integration under the direction of Herbert Vaughan, Jr. Dr. Saron has had a long-standing interest in brain and behavioral effects of meditation practice, was on the faculty at the Mind and Life Summer Institute for the three years and currently serves on the Program and Research Council of Mind and Life. In the early 1990’s he was centrally involved in a field research project investigating Tibetan Buddhist mind training in collaboration with Jose Cabezón, Richard Davidson, Francisco Varela, Alan Wallace and others under the auspices of the Private Office of H.H. the Dalai Lama and Mind and Life. Currently, in collaboration with Buddhist scholar Alan Wallace and a consortium of nearly 30 scientists at UC Davis and elsewhere, he is Principal Investigator of The Shamatha Project, a unique longitudinal study of the effects of intensive meditation training based on the practice of meditative quiescence (shamatha) and cultivation of the four immeasurables (loving kindness, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity) on attention-related skills and emotion regulation. The Shamatha Project is the most comprehensive and multimethod study to date regarding the potential effects of long-term intensive meditation practice on basic mental and physical processes related to cognition, emotion, and motivation. His other primary research interest focuses on investigating brain and behavioral correlates of sensory processing and multisensory integration in children on the autistic spectrum.