Sex? The Spectrum of Love (Alan Watts)

Alan Watts; Acharya Buddharakkhita; Ashley Wells, Amber Larson (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly


The Buddha's Philosophy of Love (Metta)

Acharya Buddharakkhita (BPS.lk, accesstoinsight.org), Amber Larson (ed.), Wisdom Quarterly

The Pali word metta (Sanskrit maitri) is a multi-significant term meaning loving-kindness, friendliness, goodwill, benevolence, fellowship, amity, concord, inoffensiveness, harmlessness, and non-violence.

The commentators define metta as the strong wish for the welfare and happiness of others (parahita-parasukha-kamana). Essentially, metta is an altruistic, boundless, universal attitude of love and friendliness as distinguished from mere amiability based on self-interest.

Through metta one refuses to be offensive and lets go of and renounces bitterness, resentment, and animosity of every kind, developing instead a mind/heart of friendliness, accommodation, and benevolence that seeks the well-being and happiness of others.

O, Goddess of Mother Nature Bhumi Devi and Kwan Yin, grant me love and wisdom.

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Real metta is easy because it is devoid of self-interest. Self-interest makes it difficult. Metta evokes within a warm-hearted feeling of fellowship, sympathy, and love, which grows boundless with practice and overcomes all social, religious, racial, political, and economic barriers.

Metta is indeed a universal, unselfish and all-embracing love. It makes one a pure font of well-being and safety for others. Just as a mother gives her own life to protect her only son, so metta only gives and never demands anything in return.

To promote one's own interest is a primordial motivation of our habitual human nature. When this urge is transformed into the motivation or desire to promote the interest and happiness of others, not only is the basic urge of self-seeking overcome, but the mind becomes universal by identifying its own enlightened interest with the interest of all.

By making this change one also promotes one's own well-being in the best possible manner. Metta is the protective and immensely patient attitude of a mother who forbears all difficulties for the sake of her child and ever protects it despite its misbehavior. Metta is also the attitude of a friend who wants to give one the best to further one's well-being.

If these qualities of metta are sufficiently (as by attaining meditative absorption called jhana through this practice) cultivated through metta-bhavana — the meditation on boundless love — the result is the acquisition of a tremendous inner power tat preserves, protects, and heals both oneself and others....

The following aims at exploring various facets of metta in theory and practice. The examination of the doctrinal and ethical side of metta proceeds through a study of the popular Karaniya Metta Sutra, the Buddha's "Discourse on Universal Love."

In connection with this theme it also looks at several short texts dealing with metta. The explanation of meditation on boundless love gives practical directions for developing this contemplation as preserved in the main meditation texts of the Theravada Buddhist tradition, The Path of Purification, The Path of Freedom, and The Path of Discriminating Wisdom. More

"Mind-reading" experiment highlights brain

"Mind-reading" experiment highlights how brain records emories

(ScienceDaily) It may be possible to "read" a person's memories just by looking at brain activity, according to research carried out by Wellcome Trust scientists.

In a study published in the journal Current Biology they show that our memories are recorded in regular patterns, a finding that challenges current scientific thinking.

Demis Hassabis and Professor Eleanor Maguire at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at UCL (University College London) have previously studied the role of a small area of the brain known as the hippocampus, which is crucial for navigation, memory recall, and imagining future events.

Now the researchers have shown how the hippocampus records memory.

When we move around, nerve cells (neurons) known as "place cells" located in the hippocampus, activate to tell us where we are.

Hassabis, Maguire, and colleagues used a functional MRI (fMRI) scanner, which measures changes in blood flow within the brain, to examine the activity of these places cells as a volunteer navigated around a virtual reality environment. The data were then analyzed by a computer algorithm developed by Demis Hassabis.

"We asked whether we could see any interesting patterns in the neural activity that could tell us what the participants were thinking, or in this case where they were," explains Professor Maguire, a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow.

"Surprisingly, just by looking at the brain data we could predict exactly where they were in the virtual reality environment. In other words, we could 'read' their spatial memories." More

VIDEO: Brain scans of the future

Psychologists have found that thought patterns used to recall the past and imagine the future are strikingly similar. Using functional magnetic...

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• Traces of the Past: Computer algorithm able to "read" memories
• Sleep makes memories stronger, helps with creativity
• Where unconscious memories form
• Motion determines how an experience is stored in memory
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Mind and Brain

• Memory
• Intelligence
• Brain Injury
• Neuroscience
• Language Acquisition
• Educational Psychology

Strange Science (Reference)

• Amnesia
• Memory bias
• Functional neuroimaging
• Limbic system

Change Your Brain, Change Your Life

Your Brain as Meditation Hindrance


Functional scan of one American brain: "Swiss cheese" (photo)

Brain damage or dysfunction can radically impede meditation progress. Letting go and entering a state of deep serenity by holding attention-awareness on a single thing (like one's breath) would flood the brain with feelgood chemicals that would begin to heal it.

Recently a WQ staffer discovered that damage or dysfunction in the cingulate gyrus (an executive portion of the brain dealing with emotion and inhibition) can ruin one's meditation to the point of hopeless frustration.

This area functions as an integral part of the limbic system involved with emotion formation as well as processing, learning, and memory. The executive control needed to inhibit inappropriate unconscious priming is also known to involve the anterior cingulate gyrus (Reference).

Change Your Brain, Change Your Life

The morale of the story may simply be for those facing this hindrance to have their brains checked. It can be done simply enough. Do it yourself, to begin with, using Dr. Amen's questionnaires. The surveys give clues that brain SPECT images can confirm or debunk.

The Amen Clinic has found that meditation lights up the brain rather than resting it. So it is soothing and healing to meditate correctly. Frustration, ambition, speculation, and so on harm rather than help. A brain scan on top of the survey confirms a diagnosis then a healing regimen can be undertaken with natural foods, removal of toxins from the environment, and lifestyle alterations. Every brain can be healthy.

(about.com)

1. Gyrus* rectus
2. Superior frontal gyrus
3. Cingulate gyrus
4. Cingulate sulcus
5. Paracentral sulcus
6. Central sulcus
7. Precuneus
8. Cuneus
9. Lingual gyrus

*Note: gyrus simply means "bump"

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