Matthieu Ricard 2014 (part 2)

0:07 So, Thank you. I found this kind of solution. I will show you a few things about the research on meditation, the brain, health, all kinds of nice things. Report an error in the passage at 0:07 Highlight the passage at 0:07

0:24 The idea was to begin with some of the great scientists themselves, a long time ago, 30 years ago or more. They were interested in meditation and practice. At that time, they found it kind of challenging to combine their interests with their professional life. Like when Daniel Goleman and Richard Davidson, John Cavazin, they went more or less together to India in the early 70s, I think. And when they came back to Harvard, where Richard Davidson was then at that time, he's a PhD PhD supervisor said, you know, if you want to do a career, forget about those stuff. So he left it as his personal interest for many years and did a brilliant career. Report an error in the passage at 0:24 Highlight the passage at 0:24

1:22 But then, of course, as the Mind and Life Institute developed and gathered meetings between the Dalai Lama and scientists, which were fostered by Francisco Varela, Report an error in the passage at 1:22 Highlight the passage at 1:22

1:36 who was a great Chilean-born neuroscientist, And who then went to Harvard, to Frankfurt and ended up finishing his life and research in Paris. And here is Francisco somewhere, just before he passed away. So he was a visionary, he was also a great practitioner. He was a student of Tuku Ogierre Moshe in Nepal and of Kanserre Moshe. And so... Report an error in the passage at 1:36 Highlight the passage at 1:36

2:10 Then slowly those exchanges, you know, just from bringing a few portable EEG to Dharamsala and other things like that, became more and more sort of developed through the dialogues. And basically in the year 2000, the idea of starting a serious research program sort of emerged during a Mind and Life meeting in Dharamsala on destructive emotion that gave rise to a book. Report an error in the passage at 2:10 Highlight the passage at 2:10

2:37 I don't know how to deal with destructive emotion by Daniel Goleman, the Dalai Lama and everyone who was there. So then in 2001, a few volunteers, including myself, went to different labs and we started the study with different approaches to study when long-term meditators engage in various kinds of meditation. Report an error in the passage at 2:37 Highlight the passage at 2:37

3:03 Do we find different signatures in the brain? What happened? Did anything happen at all? And it was really exploration about that. Nothing was certain. And of course it turned out very quickly that there was a lot of interesting things. And at that time when we did the first real meeting with His Holiness at the lab in Madison in 2001, Francisco was very sick, he was dying. Report an error in the passage at 3:03 Highlight the passage at 3:03

3:32 So we had arranged to have a direct link between the... The first result was being shown, a video linked to his room in Paris, so he could follow the proceedings and at some point His Holiness spoke directly to him, expressing his affection and concern and all that. It was very moving, but that was also the first result that came out. Report an error in the passage at 3:32 Highlight the passage at 3:32

3:56 And... And soon it became clear that there was a lot of wonderful discoveries happening, a new field of investigation. So a lot of research started to spread in different labs. And then slowly it moved from dealing with long-term practitioners, because it was clear that there were major differences. How can we do something for society? Report an error in the passage at 3:56 Highlight the passage at 3:56

4:25 What happens if we do that? For a few weeks or a few months with people who never did anything and what kind of change we will observe, we will observe any change at all in the brain, in the physiology, in the immune system with the idea that that was the only way that it could really help society because of course it would be fascinating to have... Report an error in the passage at 4:25 Highlight the passage at 4:25

4:51 You know, people who have done 50,000 hours of meditation having striking results, but it's a little bit, you know, speaking of ultramarathonians or things like that, or this guy who run a marathon in the North Pole wearing shorts. You say, fine, great, you know, fantastic. You see that on the BBC, but you wonder, what can you do? You know, he spent 90 minutes in icy cold water somewhere in Finland, but, you know, again, it's not very much something we can all do. Report an error in the passage at 4:51 Highlight the passage at 4:51

5:22 He loves that, but so what? So unless there was something that we could bring in a circular way in education, in all walks of life, then it would have been very interesting and very encouraging for those who do practice seriously. But still, no, it would not have created a strong interest, revival of interest for contemplative practice. Report an error in the passage at 5:22 Highlight the passage at 5:22

5:49 Probably the... The mindfulness revolution would not have happened. There would not have been so many clinical trials. Now there have been, last year there were 400 research papers published on the effect of mindfulness-based stress reduction on clinical aspects. 400 papers. And not in, of course, popular magazines, in good scientific publication, which shows that in all kinds of clinical aspects it has been studied. Report an error in the passage at 5:49 Highlight the passage at 5:49

6:20 So that's the next step. And then also now, I mean, I will speak more about those studies. So anyway, Francisco was really the pioneer of that. And then there are meetings, regular meetings with His Holiness in Dharamsala. Here you can see it's translated to Tenjimba. And Richard Davidson, Evan Thompson, who is a philosopher of mine also, who works a long time with Francisco. Report an error in the passage at 6:20 Highlight the passage at 6:20

6:47 Anyway, usually there are 10 or 12 scientists, philosophers, contemplatives, in a small circle, and then all around you would have maybe 100 people, an attendance about this size, for five days, full day. And then there are public meetings, Mind and Life, a little bit like the Happiness and Its Coast Conference that lasts two and a half days, and that then opens to a vast public, and it usually happens in the West. Report an error in the passage at 6:47 Highlight the passage at 6:47

7:15 I mean the West, we had one in Delhi, we had small ones in Singapore and so forth, recently one in Japan, but often in America or Europe. And then it's a bit different setting because it's on stage and there's 1,000 or more persons attending to it. So there was one at MIT in Boston with 1,000 scientists and there was one on education in Washington and so forth. Report an error in the passage at 7:15 Highlight the passage at 7:15

7:45 So here is Wolf Singer, who is one of the great neuroscientists of our times, who discovered the gamma frequencies in the brain some time ago. Report an error in the passage at 7:45 Highlight the passage at 7:45

7:56 And His Holiness is always enjoying very much those presentations. We're always asking a lot of good questions. And so, well, I don't know why those slides are there, just a transition. It doesn't harm. Report an error in the passage at 7:56 Highlight the passage at 7:56

8:16 So then, of course, that's a good place to meditate. Probably that's what this is about. And to tell that's where the place from the beginning where the experienced meditators come from. And they come from quiet places where they spend many years. It's a perfect place here. No supermarkets, no movies. Except studying and meditating, there's absolutely nothing you can do. Report an error in the passage at 8:16 Highlight the passage at 8:16

8:41 So temptations are very small. And this is kind of a lake in Bhutan, another one in Tibet, and what I can see happily at breakfast time from my hermitage in Nepal, and I long to go back sometime. Report an error in the passage at 8:41 Highlight the passage at 8:41

9:03 And of course then, you know, there was no question, I mean, those great masters like Kensei Moshi, I passed away before we started the research, but you know, we can't ask these kind of great masters, not very respectful. Of course, out of question to ask his Holiness to go with MRI machine to see how his brain functions. But other great teachers, of course, similarly, I think we don't measure a teacher, you know, how good he is at this and that. Report an error in the passage at 9:03 Highlight the passage at 9:03

9:33 But many of their disciples of Ligo Kensei-de-Moshe and Kanji-de-Moshe, my first teacher, so many of the next generation of practitioners who are students of those great masters. Then lend themselves to participate in those research. And some of them, of course, are teachers on their own rights. And there was not only monks, not only men, there was men and women, Western and Eastern, and monks and laypersons, almost equally among the long-term practitioners. Report an error in the passage at 9:33 Highlight the passage at 9:33

10:08 This is a, maybe I showed that last time, which is a wonderful practitioner who just finished six years' retreats in Tibet. He didn't go to the lab. But he looks very happy. Either I finished six years' retreat or because he did six years' retreats, I don't know. Yeah, non-stop, six years, yes. It's how you begin, you know. Some of them did much more than that. Kensei Moshé did 30 years, my teacher. Report an error in the passage at 10:08 Highlight the passage at 10:08

10:37 Yeah, they had time in those days. And also the kind of determination that we don't have. So here is Che Gyal Jemoshé from Tashijong. He's a disciple of, he's mainly from the Drupakaki tradition, but he's also a very close disciple to Kinserimushe and Kamserimushe. And so here, you know, he's with those 126 double electrodes, that means 256 points, 52 points, that's of EEG, electroencephalogram. Report an error in the passage at 10:37 Highlight the passage at 10:37

11:15 And that allows to measure the... The electric current on the surface of the head. So it's very sensitive in time. You can see the activity for each electrode and tiny change within a millisecond you can record the change. But as you see it's placed on the surface of the scalp. So of course the activity within the brain impact whether it's going to be measured here or measured there. Report an error in the passage at 11:15 Highlight the passage at 11:15

11:45 But you don't have a clear enough picture of where in three dimensions it's happening. You can do some cross sort of algorithm that tells you more or less where it is in depth in three dimensions, but it's quite crude in terms of topological localization. Report an error in the passage at 11:45 Highlight the passage at 11:45

12:11 I'll see you next time. Report an error in the passage at 12:11 Highlight the passage at 12:11

12:14 And then, as I said, it's not only Easterners and monastics, but this is a British doctor who did nine years retreat. So he did that in France and he went to the lab as well with Antoine Lutz, who was a student of Francisco Varela and the main researcher on meditation at Richard Davidson's lab. And now he's back to France after 10 years and he has his own lab in... Report an error in the passage at 12:14 Highlight the passage at 12:14

12:43 In France, continuing to study meditation, which is quite new for France. Then Mingure Moshe, some of you know him. So that's now the second main mode of investigation with the MRI machine, the scanner. So the advantage of the scanner, it's very precise localization. You know, like a few millimeters up and down, you can see in three dimensions. But it's not as good for time. Report an error in the passage at 12:43 Highlight the passage at 12:43

13:15 It cannot measure, it doesn't notice a change that lasts less than two seconds. It doesn't record because it measures a lot of things like the blood flow and other stuff that shows the activity in the brain, but it's not instantly reacting. Report an error in the passage at 13:15 Highlight the passage at 13:15

13:30 And so one advantage, so it's used more because it gives precise location, but it needs some change that lasts at least for a few seconds. Which, of course, would be the case with meditation, but if you have a very fast event, you won't catch it. So, Mingle Moshe described the MRI as having four characteristics. Report an error in the passage at 13:30 Highlight the passage at 13:30

13:54 It says it's narrow, it is dark, it is cold, and it is noisy. And, of course, you don't meditate like that. That would be too nice. You have to lie down. Your head is blocking this thing, and usually they put all kinds of things to make sure that you don't move at all. Sometimes they want to make you bite something so that you don't move. That's too much. So we decided we are not going to bite anything. We promise that we don't move, but for one and a half hour, you don't have to move even a millimeter your head. Report an error in the passage at 13:54 Highlight the passage at 13:54

14:26 Otherwise, the measure from one, because we do many times a resting state of, say, one minute, then 90 seconds or two minutes of a particular meditation, and then we do it again and again, 50 times. So in between two, if you move, since they are measuring localization, it's all screwed up. So therefore, we should not move at all. And it's very complicated to correct if we move. Report an error in the passage at 14:26 Highlight the passage at 14:26

14:52 They have a lot of calculation. It makes their life complicated. So, of course, you have to lie down. It's kind of dark. And then you have been jet lagged. So after one hour, you know, sometimes they say, are you sleeping or not? You hear from the voice. It doesn't seem to be meditating very much. Report an error in the passage at 14:52 Highlight the passage at 14:52

15:14 So we try our best, huh? So here, that's the first time I went in 2001 when His Holiness came. So I spent a whole day, then they analyzed all the things in the night to have something to show to His Holiness. That's Richard Davidson. I think that morning I spent two and a half hours in the scanner. So it's kind of nice when you're in a small retreat. So following that, we published a paper, and they wanted me to sign, not just to show off, but because to show... Report an error in the passage at 15:14 Highlight the passage at 15:14

15:43 That the contemplatives were not just guinea pigs, although we are guinea pigs also, but also collaborators in the sense that we co-designed the study, you know, how long we should meditate to get into a particular state, what sort of comes to mind when we see the result and, you know, according to what are the special areas that the birds are known for. Report an error in the passage at 15:43 Highlight the passage at 15:43

16:06 For instance, if they tell you, well, that's strange, you know, when you do compassion. There's the premoto area that is also activated. Premoto means readiness to action. Well, of course, because compassion implies a kind of readiness to action. So we discussed the results, tried to interpret them from the perspective of the meditator. So it was just to emphasize that, because normally subjects of the experiment are never co-authored, but to show that it was more than just being a subject put in the MRI. Report an error in the passage at 16:06 Highlight the passage at 16:06

16:39 But that we actually worked together, they wanted the contemplatives to co-sign the articles, and that custom has went on. So some of the results, you know, nothing very new since I came last time, but there will be a lot of results, but some of the striking ones, I'll just remind. So here's, for instance, in the lower graph, the activity of the brain in electroencephalogram of novices. Report an error in the passage at 16:39 Highlight the passage at 16:39

17:08 Basically, you know, we give a simple version of what is, this was about compassion meditation, what compassion meditation is about. It's quite clear. I mean, you just fill your mind with compassion, do it the best you can for a few minutes and rest and do it again. So, I mean, people understand it's not a complete mystery and they do that their best they can. But because they don't have much training, if you measure a certain threshold, the activity... Report an error in the passage at 17:08 Highlight the passage at 17:08

17:34 At rest, you don't notice anything and also when they engage in, when they try to do that meditation, also not much happens because yet they are not trained into activating the brain. Activation is not strong enough to clearly show something. While in case of the long-term meditators, when they are at rest, they are also resting so you don't... Report an error in the passage at 17:34 Highlight the passage at 17:34

18:02 Expect to have a strong activity, but then when they are told to engage in this unconditional compassion, there's a huge activation you can see here compared to that. This doesn't mean much. This is here that it happens. And this is happening in a particular frequency, which is about 35 hertz, that we call the gamma frequency. Report an error in the passage at 18:02 Highlight the passage at 18:02

18:30 And the gamma frequency has also, among other things, to do with synchronizing in coherence different areas of the brain. High coherence in the brain. And it also occurs in the anterior electrode, those in front of the brain, which is the prefrontal cortex. So also linked with positive effect, emotional regulation and so forth. So here is a huge activation, so big that... Report an error in the passage at 18:30 Highlight the passage at 18:30

19:00 Maybe there was something wrong, but the fact that we don't find it in novices, of course, it's encouraging, but we thought, why it's so big? And maybe some muscle activity, you know, when they are at rest, meditators are like that, and when they're compassion, they're sort of like this. So there might be some muscle and tonus activity, but, you know, subject after subject, and different methods of eliminating that by measuring the tension of the muscles here with other electrodes. Report an error in the passage at 19:00 Highlight the passage at 19:00

19:29 Finally, it was clear that it was due to intrinsic generation of this compassion meditation that was causing that, and now more or less everyone agrees about that. Report an error in the passage at 19:29 Highlight the passage at 19:29

19:42 Now, if you look at the, on top here, because of the, maybe let's see if I can, okay. So here, you see a number of practitioners, and what this measures is the intensity of the peak here, the maximum. And you can see that they are quite different. Now there are more than 20 subjects, but that was the first paper in 2003, I think. So you can see that they are quite different ones. Report an error in the passage at 19:42 Highlight the passage at 19:42

20:13 Some are much higher activation than others. There's amigurumushe, very, very high activation. But compared to controls, it's obviously a different population. Here has really nothing happened at all. Here some are lower than others, but they're all significantly above the line. Except this one. Basically, you can see it's very, very different. Now, if you look even at the raw signal, a raw signal is what you measure from the electrode directly without having doing any calculation and anything. Report an error in the passage at 20:13 Highlight the passage at 20:13

20:46 Usually, it's quite chaotic and you don't see any difference with the raw signal, unanalyzed signal. But here, when the people enter in compassion meditation, there's a different practitioners. You can see even there it's so obvious and so strong that even at that level you can clearly see when they start the compassion meditation and this huge increase that you see here. Report an error in the passage at 20:46 Highlight the passage at 20:46

21:09 Those are all different practitioners. So that's quite interesting that it's very consistent among practitioners and very different from non-practitioners. And then there were subjects like Mingyur Moshe who at that time was even younger than now. That was when he came first, it was 10 years ago. But he has done six years retreat from age 13. So he had many, many hours of practice still at the early age. Report an error in the passage at 21:09 Highlight the passage at 21:09

21:39 And there were also elder meditators who had done regular meditation for a long time. And then the idea was, well, is it to do with age or with the time you spend practicing? And what's interesting, of course, Report an error in the passage at 21:39 Highlight the passage at 21:39

21:56 The intensity of these gamma waves were related to the number of hours of practice. It's quite a neat linearity. And those were those 60,000 hours, they were the ones who were activating their brain stronger, which shows that you should be perseverant, but patient. Because it starts suddenly showing up. Report an error in the passage at 21:56 Highlight the passage at 21:56

22:20 After 10,000 hours, but the more you do, the better, which is exactly what we expect. So no quick fix. And if you look at the brain imagery of the meditators at rest, so they're not supposed to do anything special, so why should there be something special happening? But when they engage in meditation, there are different areas of the brain. This is again with compassion meditation, so some are linked with a sense of affiliation. Report an error in the passage at 22:20 Highlight the passage at 22:20

22:50 Parental, maternal love, of positive effect, etc., etc. So different areas of the movement are strongly activated. But nothing much in the control, the non-meditation. I mean, those who have not trained for meditation more than a week. At rest, there's nothing. Meditation, there's nothing. So basically, it makes no difference. Report an error in the passage at 22:50 Highlight the passage at 22:50

23:10 Of course, there is a subjective difference. I mean, they try something. But the threshold of detection... Which was said is such that we could see the difference clearly in those and then here they don't pass the threshold so nothing is seen. Now people were asked, we did that with Tanya Singer, asked the meditators if they could increase gradually and at will and up and down the intensity of their compassion. Report an error in the passage at 23:10 Highlight the passage at 23:10

23:39 So it may look a bit artificial but in another sense you can have a... Feeling that if you can generate a feeling, a mental state like compassion, you can put basically all what you have in terms of concentration and intensity, or you can just evoke it in your mind and then evoke it a little more and then fill your mind. Report an error in the passage at 23:39 Highlight the passage at 23:39

24:00 So anyway, subjectively, when the militants were asked to go from, say, 90 to 30 and 30 to 60 percent of their potential and go back to zero and... That again and again many, many times, and you aggregate the results, you can see that the state where they were supposed to do 30 % of their capacity for compassion and 60%, 90%, what is measured corresponds to what they were asked to do, which show a kind of quite remarkable flexibility of doing something, anything at will. Report an error in the passage at 24:00 Highlight the passage at 24:00

24:37 So same for pain. Mitter were asked to imagine physical pain, not even get real pain. But yet the areas of the brain which are connected with real pain were activated. They were vividly imagining a burning sensation on their hand and when they were asked to do so, intensity varying from 30, 60 to 90 percent, you could also record this activation in the pain areas. Report an error in the passage at 24:37 Highlight the passage at 24:37

25:08 Proportional to what they were asked to do, which is again more remarkable even because nobody trains in generating pain in their mind. But they could apply the skill that they had to anything else including imagining pain. So then we went to study the differences between empathy and compassion. I'm not going to tell. Report an error in the passage at 25:08 Highlight the passage at 25:08

25:38 All that here. But basically, when we did the study with Tanya Singer, she's studying empathy. And empathy is the faculty you have to resonate. Well, there's two. This affective empathy is the faculty to resonate with anyone's mental state, the situation, whether they're joyful, in pain, frightened. So if you are in front of such a person and you empathize this affective resonance, you will feel something. And you know it's triggered by the other person. Report an error in the passage at 25:38 Highlight the passage at 25:38

26:17 Unlike emotional contagion where you don't even know. You are nervous because the other one is nervous, but you don't really know it's because of that. It just happened. There you know clearly someone is suffering that makes you suffer. So she has been studying that for years. and so when Report an error in the passage at 26:17 Highlight the passage at 26:17

26:36 Myself and others went to the lab. Then, you know, we did what we usually do, kind of loving kindness and compassion meditation. And right away, Tanya looked so that, you know, even before analyzing all the results, we had a system where she could see in real time with the MRI, which is normally quite rare, that we are doing something different. Report an error in the passage at 26:36 Highlight the passage at 26:36

27:04 She would say, what are you doing, basically? So she said, let's talk. And so we talked and then she said, well, that's quite different than what is usually seen with empathy. And so therefore she asked us whether we could just try to do just empathy. So resonating with intense suffering that we have seen or heard or been witness or imagining someone, dear one, in great suffering. Report an error in the passage at 27:04 Highlight the passage at 27:04

27:32 And resonating again and again and again and not trying to, you know, normally we will also react with compassion and love. But this time to try to leave it aside a little bit. Just focus on suffering, just on that again and again. And if you do that for a certain time, like even an hour, by alternating rest and empathy, rest, empathy, so forth. Report an error in the passage at 27:32 Highlight the passage at 27:32

27:57 Very clearly, very quickly, you felt this burnout, this kind of emotional drain or exhaustion of the empathy, so feeling distressed and powerless and sort of all the symptoms of burnout. So then the idea was to switch to compassion and see what happens, and that became completely different. The moment the meditators engaged in compassion, Then it was a very different mental state, like very much loving and instead of being all negative about suffering. Report an error in the passage at 27:57 Highlight the passage at 27:57

28:36 Suffering is negative, but you deal with it in a constructive way, in a warm-hearted way, with positive emotions like nurturing and caring, which of course is also perceived by the other person as being well taken care of. So someone who cares for you. Instead of someone who is distressed and try to distantiate herself or himself. And also for you, you don't burn out because this has a nurturing aspect and it protects actually from empathic distress. Report an error in the passage at 28:36 Highlight the passage at 28:36

29:10 That's what we clearly saw. And then when looking in the brain, that gave rise to this paper, there's clearly different networks. For instance, in pure empathy. There are some areas of the insula and areas of the amygdala, which has to do with fear and emotional distress, which are activated, while with loving-kindness it's a different side of the insula. Report an error in the passage at 29:10 Highlight the passage at 29:10

29:39 There are other areas connected with a sense of gratification, of affiliation, of maternal love, activated. The area of fear and so forth is deactivated. So it's a very different network. And so that's very interesting, and that's why now Tania Singer got a big grant from the European Commission to do a study over one year with 300 volunteers coming just as novices to see. Report an error in the passage at 29:39 Highlight the passage at 29:39

30:09 And it's almost completed, and already the preliminary results are very remarkable. To distinguish what happens if they train, so they come, they practice a little bit every day, then they come every Saturday for a whole year. And there's two groups, one 150 does those programs, another does something else, which is also motivating and interesting, but not with... Report an error in the passage at 30:09 Highlight the passage at 30:09

30:30 So there's empathy, compassion, loving kindness, and clearly it shows that the sort of repairing effect or the antidote effect of loving kindness... For preventing burnout. So that could have wonderful repercussions for the caregivers. So here, I'm not going to go in detail, but you see the difference. Report an error in the passage at 30:30 Highlight the passage at 30:30

30:54 For instance, look at the brain activities of different areas in empathy state and in the compassion state. You can see it's all quite different. Report an error in the passage at 30:54 Highlight the passage at 30:54

31:05 I won't go in all different areas of the brain, but you can see that here. One is strongly activated in compassion and nothing in empathy. This one is strongly activated in empathy, not in compassion. So it's very two different phenomenas. And then also we did the thing with pain. And it also turns out that when you meditate on compassion for someone else, then also your feeling of your own physical pain is sort of less unpleasant. Report an error in the passage at 31:05 Highlight the passage at 31:05

31:33 That can happen with open presence, that can happen with compassion meditation. And interestingly enough, You still perceive the full intensity of the pain. This is novices and long-term meditators. But then when you rate the unpleasantness of the pain in focused attention, then it's a little bit less, much less in meditators. Report an error in the passage at 31:33 Highlight the passage at 31:33

31:59 But in open presence, in the novices, it doesn't make much difference, but it makes a huge difference in the meditators. That means you still perceive the pain very clearly. But you are not so much emotionally troubled by it. You don't... Yeah, that's where you get real pain. It's either heat, which is not too bad, but it's quite strong, but electricity, which is a bit worse, because it's not very natural, you know. Report an error in the passage at 31:59 Highlight the passage at 31:59

32:26 So I prefer the heat, even if it's burning, because electricity is something strange. I don't like it very much. But we did all kinds of things, you know, so... Report an error in the passage at 32:26 Highlight the passage at 32:26

32:38 So there's a very strong mitigating effect, the feeling of pain. So now, sustained attention also. I mean, I mentioned in the beginning that William James says an education that will foster attention will be the education of excellence. And you see here, you know, untrained people, when they have an attention task, they make more and more mistakes, their attention gets distracted, but it's not the case with a long-term practitioner. Report an error in the passage at 32:38 Highlight the passage at 32:38

33:06 And this is 10 minutes, but it... Up to 45 minutes, you get the same thing. Flat curve, basically. For some of them, zero mistakes. And this one, he came out just at the end of three years' retreat and went to the lab. And when he finished those 45 minutes, he had a very interesting comment. He said, what's the problem? He did a perfect score. There was a thousand things to do. Report an error in the passage at 33:06 Highlight the passage at 33:06

33:31 Every three per second, you have to push a button. If it's zero and not if it's another number and you should not make mistakes and it's very fast, zero mistake. So another half, even in 10 minutes, but less in 45 minutes. And he said, no, you want me to continue? Shall I do that the rest of the day? He thought it was just fine. No big deal. Report an error in the passage at 33:31 Highlight the passage at 33:31

33:56 So then another test that was interesting, you know, when you pay attention to something, you look at something, And your attention sticks to something and then you have to sort of withdraw your attention to unstick it and then you are ready to look at something else. That's what pickpockets take advantage of. They draw your attention to something and then by the time you unstick there they have taken your wallet. So a quality of not stickiness, no stickiness will be an advantage. Report an error in the passage at 33:56 Highlight the passage at 33:56

34:29 So there is actually a test that is well known that's called attentional blink. So what they do, they show you all these images within a second. They flash like that and sometimes there's a vehicle, sometimes an animal. And you are told to look for a vehicle or it could be letters and numbers. So one number comes in the middle of letters. Report an error in the passage at 34:29 Highlight the passage at 34:29

34:56 So you are said, please look when you see a vehicle or an animal. At the end they ask you, did you see an elephant? And you said, yes. Report an error in the passage at 34:56 Highlight the passage at 34:56

35:04 Oh no, look for an elephant. So you look for an elephant and then, oh, you see an elephant. So your attention goes to that elephant, stay with the elephant and unstick from the elephant. If you are sticky, then what happens is the next, suppose the elephant is there, the next one, two, three, sometimes four images, you will not see it because it's like a blink of your attention. Report an error in the passage at 35:04 Highlight the passage at 35:04

35:27 Like if you blink your eyes, you don't see the next image. It's a blink of your attention because the attention is busy with the elephant, so it doesn't see the next one. It will come very fast. If you were not sticky and just seeing things without getting to engage, if you have that capacity, then you will see everything, right? Report an error in the passage at 35:27 Highlight the passage at 35:27

35:44 So that's called attentional blink, and it's a measure of different things. It has been shown, if you listen to classical music, attentional blink is reduced. Somehow you are just there, not to engage, but present. So what about meditators? So we'll do a test. Actually, it's easier on the screen than on real. But you watch that, and you look for a number three, okay? Report an error in the passage at 35:44 Highlight the passage at 35:44

36:11 And then I'll ask you another question. So are you ready? Watch the center of the cross. Okay, now. Oh, it didn't work. Well, I think because we are not in projection mode. So basically you look very, and about half people will also have seen a seven. A, B, C, D and half usually don't see it. So the seven is too close. Now what happens with meditators? So here are in neutral state when they don't do anything. Report an error in the passage at 36:11 Highlight the passage at 36:11

36:43 You see they start seeing the other image if it's not too close, if it comes half a second after. But here only 50 % see it. But now if they are in open presence meditation which is a very vast open state of mind, a bit of a Report an error in the passage at 36:43 Highlight the passage at 36:43

37:02 the mindfulness the what do you call it? Mindfulness Pro or something like that. It's a little bit more than mindfulness. It's a very open state of mind. Mindfulness Plus. Report an error in the passage at 37:02 Highlight the passage at 37:02

37:20 We're resting in this very clear, vivid awareness. And so... Report an error in the passage at 37:20 Highlight the passage at 37:20

37:24 awareness then so They can see right away much better, and very soon they see everything. And there was a meditator who was 65 years old, so normally your capacity diminished with age. This guy saw everything all the time. He was totally non-sticky. Right from the start, you know, 200 milliseconds, he could never miss the second image. Report an error in the passage at 37:24 Highlight the passage at 37:24

37:49 So that was quite remarkable. Now, so again, this is on the longer study. So now someone asked this morning about the explosion. Report an error in the passage at 37:49 Highlight the passage at 37:49

37:59 She's gone out too bad. I'm teasing. She's coming back? Oh, she's not gone for good. Okay, we'll have a cup of tea. Report an error in the passage at 37:59 Highlight the passage at 37:59

38:12 Sorry, not everyone has a cup of tea. I deeply apologize. Report an error in the passage at 38:12 Highlight the passage at 38:12

38:19 No hurry. Report an error in the passage at 38:19 Highlight the passage at 38:19

38:29 Okay. Oh, but now I don't know if it will work. We'll see. Oh, yeah, I can go in the other one. So then the startle now, explosion. So the idea is that when you startle, If you are very surprised by something, usually it's a good reaction because suppose the world starts crumbling. If you are looking at something carefully, reading a book, you better startle and do something. Report an error in the passage at 38:29 Highlight the passage at 38:29

38:58 So it brings back your attention right now. Of course, if your attention was somewhere else, then you jump because something happened to bring you back. So the idea was what type of meditation could mitigate that. Report an error in the passage at 38:58 Highlight the passage at 38:58

39:15 So if you're already in now, then you don't have to jump, right? If you are not distracted. If you are in the present moment, this open presence, so first the present moment, then you don't have to be brought back to the present moment because you are there. And then the explosion, which is the startle, of course the startle, it's like two gunshots near you here. Well, it's one of those present moments, so you are there, so you are. Report an error in the passage at 39:15 Highlight the passage at 39:15

39:40 So you don't have to be brought back there. In addition to that, Even you are there, it's a kind of loud explosion, so still somehow it's always surprising. But if your mind is very vast, then it's an explosion in a big space. If your mind is very focused and narrow and too congested, like a firecracker in a small space will make a lot of damage, not in a big open space. Report an error in the passage at 39:40 Highlight the passage at 39:40

40:10 So the idea is both the... Present moment and the vastness of the mind. So among the different types of meditation, when we discuss ahead of time, we sort of predicted that it would be the best candidate to diminish this startle. And the startle is very instinctive because, you know, you have to startle immediately. It's like you see a snake, you don't have to think five times, should I go away? Report an error in the passage at 40:10 Highlight the passage at 40:10

40:36 It's before even you can think, you jump. Likewise, This should be as instant as possible. So it shortcuts all the upper regulation of the brain, goes straight to the reactivity, very low instinctive level. So usually you cannot control that. So the question was, can we? And the prediction was quite good because if you see... Report an error in the passage at 40:36 Highlight the passage at 40:36

41:01 So the idea with the meditators was... First, self-destruction. So imagining a very complex situation, driving in Tibet or somewhere. And then when the explosion comes, of course, you are not there, so you jump. No question. So you are actually not completely dumb or something. You don't hear well or you just don't react to anything. You do jump if you are distracted. Report an error in the passage at 41:01 Highlight the passage at 41:01

41:27 And focus the tension. We also thought it's not going to work so well because you cannot focus on the sound that is not there yet. So what do you focus? On the passage of time? But still, compared to the explosion, it's a kind of distraction in a way because you focus on something else. Your mind is busy. So then you still jump. While open presence is the way where there's less somatic activity, means how much you jump. Report an error in the passage at 41:27 Highlight the passage at 41:27

41:54 And then if you look at facial behavior, similarly, open presence has less facial reaction. Still a little bit of a blink you will see. And then if you look at how it affects your cardiac coherence, I mean the regularity of your heartbeat, and a lot in the distraction because it's big upset, less in focus because you are more in control, nothing almost in open presence. Report an error in the passage at 41:54 Highlight the passage at 41:54

42:22 I mean that thing doesn't disturb your inner state. It's just a little bit of a twitch in the body. So let's see if we can shift it, it can work. Oh yeah, maybe. So these are the first two. They study that a lot. So there are two subjects. So maybe I'll put that near the sound so you can hear. But it's not the same time, so the recordings of the explosions are somehow less loud in those subjects than when it comes to the meditator. Report an error in the passage at 42:22 Highlight the passage at 42:22

43:01 So first there's a jump and there's also a sense of relief, you know. Oh, you know. Report an error in the passage at 43:01 Highlight the passage at 43:01

43:12 Paul Ekman that is watching. Report an error in the passage at 43:12 Highlight the passage at 43:12

43:17 That's one of the motivators. Report an error in the passage at 43:17 Highlight the passage at 43:17

43:22 Explosion number one. Report an error in the passage at 43:22 Highlight the passage at 43:22

43:30 So not so much. A little bit. But in terms of the after reaction and the physiological reaction, as you saw, there's really not much. Report an error in the passage at 43:30 Highlight the passage at 43:30

43:44 So, you know, that's... it was not just more, right? Report an error in the passage at 43:44 Highlight the passage at 43:44

· · · silence, 1 minute

43:47 First, it's interesting because it's kind of the prediction we had, what type of meditation would work best. So this shows how important is the dialogue between the scientists and the third-person experience, we say, and first-person experience. And also, well, that was a good, interesting thing to do. Then, okay, now we go to the... Report an error in the passage at 43:47 Highlight the passage at 43:47

44:11 So there's many studies like that. I can't give you too many details. But then you say, okay, now let's go to a few weeks of practice. So there was a first study of three months showing a strong boost in the immune system, reduction of anxiety. Report an error in the passage at 44:11 Highlight the passage at 44:11

44:28 Three months is not all day, of course. It was like 30 minutes a day or so. And then four weeks. And four weeks we could see, I mean, not we, but my scientist friend, like changing in activity of the brain. But then someone starts looking at structural change in the brain, you know, how the brain changes physically. And it is known that, say, birds who learn a new song, their brain change. Report an error in the passage at 44:28 Highlight the passage at 44:28

44:57 Taxi drivers of London who, before the GPS invention, had to memorize 40,000 streets. Now they don't even know any name of the street. I mean, maybe in London, but not in Paris for sure. You ask them Notre Dame and they say, what? How do you spell that? So anyway, so... And then the area of the brain, which had to do with the topology of the outside world, was vastly physically increasing in those taxi drivers. Report an error in the passage at 44:57 Highlight the passage at 44:57

45:26 And similarly, people who do juggle and people who do violin, the area that correlated the movement of the fingers, were physically increased. More dense, higher density of neurons, bigger volume, bigger gray matter, so increased physically. So now, four weeks. 30 minutes a day of mindfulness meditation. And you can see here, compared to the control group, a significant increase in the hippocampus. Report an error in the passage at 45:26 Highlight the passage at 45:26

45:54 And hippocampus is an interesting structure because it's the first place where change is seen when you train into anything. It's the main structure to assimilate novelty. And then it sort of sends different... Messages to other areas of the brain about changing behavior and all that, but it is the kind of first sort of reception center for novelty. Report an error in the passage at 45:54 Highlight the passage at 45:54

46:23 And then in some circumstances of life, when we do physical exercise, the hippocampus can change faster. So if you want to meditate while jogging, it's very good because it will change your brain quicker if you combine with physical exercise. Then if you are in depression, it's well known, If you are very stressed or in depression, the hippocampus doesn't work very well, or in addiction also. So it's more difficult to change because you don't trigger the change very easily. Report an error in the passage at 46:23 Highlight the passage at 46:23

46:55 So you have a compounded problem. You have a problem, plus it's hard to change from it. So it's a double sort of challenge. But in this case, you could see that change can be quite big, like 30,000 new neurons a day. So it's quite interesting. So that you could see in four weeks. Then even two weeks of compassion meditation. This was done at Richard Davidson's lab. And first measuring the prosocial behavior. Report an error in the passage at 46:55 Highlight the passage at 46:55

47:25 This was done, another study was in real life situation. This was done with prosocial game where how sort of generous and you are with others so there's all kind of system. But it works well because it showed big difference compared to other type of You know, any kind of psychological intervention. But the other interesting thing is even during those two weeks, you could see a shrinking in area of the brain, the amygdala that has to do with somehow antisocial behavior, I mean anger, fear and all these things, aggressivity. Report an error in the passage at 47:25 Highlight the passage at 47:25

48:01 That was already physically shrinked a little bit enough that if you look only at the data of how much it shrank in the amygdala, You could say, well, that person shrank a lot, it should have a high increase of prosocial behavior, and you could predict back, not looking at this data, you could say, well, this person should have a medium increase or a large increase, and you would fall right. Report an error in the passage at 48:01 Highlight the passage at 48:01

48:30 So there was a correlation between how much more prosocial behavior and how much the amygdala has shranked, all that in two weeks. So it's quite encouraging. So that's one of the first studies, reducing anxiety after three months, increasing the immune system and so forth. There's not supposed to be there, there's too many datas. So now there's another interesting one that was done through the Shamata project with Alan Wallace and Cliff Saron and 15 scientists from Davis University in California. Report an error in the passage at 48:30 Highlight the passage at 48:30

49:08 there That was a bit more intense because it was three months of full-time retreat compared to a control group that was hanging around in the Dama Mount in Colorado, the Shambhala Mountain Retreat Center. And so there were people just living there, serving as controls. And then at the end of the three months, there are many measures, very interesting ones, but one in particular that was interesting is the measure of telomerase. Report an error in the passage at 49:08 Highlight the passage at 49:08

49:42 So why is it so interesting? Because at the end of our chromosomes, they end with, instead of being a two-strand DNA, like most DNA, it's a single-strand DNA at the end of the chromosome. What's interesting is as we age, that little bit... The tail of single-train DNA got shorter and shorter and shorter. And if it's very short, then the cells stop dividing and age and degenerate. Report an error in the passage at 49:42 Highlight the passage at 49:42

50:10 But there's an enzyme that protects the telomere, the telomere. So it prevents it from being shorter at each cell division. And it's known that a very stressful life will diminish the telomere. I mean, you age faster. It has been shown before. Report an error in the passage at 50:10 Highlight the passage at 50:10

50:30 But in this case, what was interesting, this is not so clear here, but it stops here for the control group, the activity of telomerase is significantly higher in those who did three months of practice, which means that somehow it seems to be aging less quickly, which is, of course, good news. Report an error in the passage at 50:30 Highlight the passage at 50:30

50:55 And then now another way, that's all about neuroplasticity. This was... Everything before is neuroplasticity. This is about the DNA and now the expression of the genes. So neuroplasticity about the change of the brain, functional change, structural change. And now the genes, of course we get genes from our parents and that's it, no choice. But, you know, look at all those light bulbs. Report an error in the passage at 50:55 Highlight the passage at 50:55

51:27 Imagine that we... Half of them are on and half off. So those who are off, it's like they are not there. And then if you turn them on and turn off the other ones, then, you know, the fact that having 100 bulbs doesn't mean that they are burning all the time or not burning at any time. So if you got a certain number of genes that might cause good or difficult things, it all depends whether they are expressed or not, are they functional or not. Report an error in the passage at 51:27 Highlight the passage at 51:27

51:55 It turns out a lot of factors. It can either trigger expression of the genes or repress the expression of the genes. And for a long time, it could be for years, like you could have a strong inhibition of certain genes that last for 10, 20 years. So that's called epigenetics. So in the case of, it has been shown in many instances, like about genes related to stress or to trauma. Report an error in the passage at 51:55 Highlight the passage at 51:55

52:14 It's all. Report an error in the passage at 52:14 Highlight the passage at 52:14

52:25 and to other, I've There was a study at the end of the Second World War in Holland where the children were at malnutrition for the last year of the war. And therefore the gene expression pattern was quite different because of malnutrition. But it turns out that that genetic expression lasted for the rest of their life and they were much less, even after that they eat normally for the rest of their life. Report an error in the passage at 52:25 Highlight the passage at 52:25

52:54 It was just one year. They were much less prone to heart disease and diabetes, much less. And then even their own children had a remnant of that. So it sort of carried on even one generation. It won't carry forever because the genes themselves are not changed, but the environment of the gene is changed. Report an error in the passage at 52:54 Highlight the passage at 52:54

53:15 So to say that it has an important effect on the influence of the environment. So in that case, it was eight hours in one day of caring mindfulness. That's mindfulness with an element of loving kindness. And as you can see, they studied several genes connected with stress also, with anxiety. Here the expression is very different in the meditators than in other ones. Report an error in the passage at 53:15 Highlight the passage at 53:15

53:44 So even eight hours, you can influence the expression of your own genes. So you see it's a very interesting... And this was also done with a Spanish geneticist, again at Richard Davidson's lab. This is a very interesting field of study. It's very expensive. As Richard says, it makes MRI look cheap compared to that. And MRI is not cheap. So one single experimentation costs at least $40,000. Report an error in the passage at 53:44 Highlight the passage at 53:44

54:11 So they cannot do too many. But it is highly interesting. So now here we... We all thought, because Ernest is very keen on education, so can it be applied to school children, preschoolers, very young children, which is the best age to do something. So they developed this 8-10 weeks program with children. Half of it is with mindfulness. Report an error in the passage at 54:11 Highlight the passage at 54:11

54:38 And half of it and the strongest part is with loving kindness, gratitude. So I'm not going to give you the detail. I spoke a little bit the other days. But basically it's 20 minutes three times a week and the children love it. And some instructors have been trained. There's a manual for that. And they did a study on a class and not on 10 more classes. Report an error in the passage at 54:38 Highlight the passage at 54:38

54:58 And it's wonderful results. Because it really changed the attitude of the children. So first of all there... Their pro-social sort of behavior is much improved, less conflict, more reconciliation, more empathy and so forth. You could measure that different ways. And then, of course, the famous Seekers test, which is the top of the standard of science, is that before you start the intervention, that's not too expensive, fortunately. Report an error in the passage at 54:58 Highlight the passage at 54:58

55:32 You know, you ask, and the teacher finds out by asking the kids who is their best friend in the class, who is the child that they don't like too much, and then they give envelopes with a photo of the best friend, the last favorite child, an unknown child, and a sick child, which they don't know either, but it looks really sick. Report an error in the passage at 55:32 Highlight the passage at 55:32

55:53 And then they are given this bunch of stickers, which they like very much, but they are told you have to give them. So to whom do you give it? Well, No mystery in the beginning. Before the intervention, they give almost vast majority to their best friend. That's what you will do, you know. And then, you know, what happens after eight weeks? Report an error in the passage at 55:53 Highlight the passage at 55:53

56:14 You know, they are four or five years old. And it just happened, you know, just like that. And, you know, the training is more like play. You know, when you see them lying down with the stone, they just feel their breath going up and down. It's not such a big deal, basically. It's enhanced play with mindfulness and kindness. So it's difficult to expect a big difference. If there was no difference, it would say, okay, well, we tried, but nothing. Report an error in the passage at 56:14 Highlight the passage at 56:14

56:42 In fact, there was a big difference, a complete difference. Here, you know, in the beginning, they give almost everything to their best friend, but after, no more discrimination. And it's quite remarkable, you know, it's almost the same. Hardly any difference between their best friend and their less favorite child. So discrimination, which is so harmful in society of all kinds. Report an error in the passage at 56:42 Highlight the passage at 56:42

57:05 Gender discrimination, wealth discrimination, racial discrimination, name it. Not only football club fans, but this is a big issue in society. So imagine that at four or five years old, you could have a lasting effect on... Sort of basically getting rid of discrimination. You can maintain that training and that's what they are going to see now if it's lost and if it just needs to be maintained with little intervention. Report an error in the passage at 57:05 Highlight the passage at 57:05

57:33 That would be a fantastic asset for those children in life. Of course they can judge people by their behavior but they don't have a priori discrimination which makes a very terrible effect. Report an error in the passage at 57:33 Highlight the passage at 57:33

57:47 So then, as you can see through the studies, there was a kind of rehabilitation of the notion of meditation in the West. It's not just like blissing out on the mango tree and emptying your mind and relaxing or levitating on the beach or something like that. And so, a little bit more serious. And those are the monks escaping from the lab. Report an error in the passage at 57:47 Highlight the passage at 57:47

58:12 So, you know, this is a very interesting endeavor. I think it's a good contribution to society. That was His Holiness' wish. And so this is going on. There's more and more research here and there. One very interesting one is the one on empathy and compassion in Germany with Tanya Singer, which Davidson is continuing. Report an error in the passage at 58:12 Highlight the passage at 58:12

58:34 There are many labs studying difference of pain. Others study mindfulness, loving-kindness effect, on the inflammation, on this and that. Report an error in the passage at 58:34 Highlight the passage at 58:34

58:46 So now it's a burgeoning field. We could contemplative neuroscience or contemplative psychology. There have been two major symposiums on that. One is next fall in Boston. There was one in Denver, one in Berlin, with people coming from 40 different countries. So now it's really taking off as something that is both respectable scientifically and a very wonderful application for society. Report an error in the passage at 58:46 Highlight the passage at 58:46

59:15 This is not for this time. Now, just because I have the projector, before we resume our meditation, just to show how we can try to put compassion in action, because always, of course, joining you and visiting different places, trying to dedicate that to helping some humanitarian projects that we are doing. Report an error in the passage at 59:15 Highlight the passage at 59:15

59:44 Karuṇā Sechen, our association, foundation. So we now treat 100,000 patients a year in Nepal, northern India and Tibet. And here is a quite large clinic in Nepal. We have a very big one in India now that goes to 19 villages around Bodhgaya where sick patients from 150 villages to attend. And so 40,000 patients a year in that area. Report an error in the passage at 59:44 Highlight the passage at 59:44

1:00:13 And we do also program with literacy for women, meditation at school and all kinds of things. This is a dental cabinet in Nepal. We have a palliative care unit, palliative care at home. And we care also for the handicapped. And this is the mobile clinic in India. And we go to those villages, bring medicine. We build a health center near Bodhgaya. Report an error in the passage at 1:00:13 Highlight the passage at 1:00:13

1:00:40 We have a program for TB, for AIDS, for malaria, and it's our headquarters there. And we have motivators in the village. We work with Bunker Roy from the Barefoot College to train illiterate grandmothers to become solar engineers. That's a neat program, and we collect rainwater. Report an error in the passage at 1:00:40 Highlight the passage at 1:00:40

1:01:02 And in Nepal, we worked for some years with a social entrepreneur who built school with bamboo. And we built nine bamboo schools, 2,000 kids each for quite a modest sum of money. You can build a school for 2,000 children for a little bit over $100,000. That's quite a deal. And 60 % girls. So the bamboo lasted about 25 years at least. Report an error in the passage at 1:01:02 Highlight the passage at 1:01:02

1:01:31 And then in northern Nepal, in Umla, we build a hostel for our schools and we make small elementary schools, government schools that were more or less abandoned. We sort of restarted them. And so this prevents all the people leaving the mountain areas for Kathmandu. In Tibet, we build 15 different clinics like this, like this one, dispensaries in very remote nomad areas. Report an error in the passage at 1:01:31 Highlight the passage at 1:01:31

1:01:59 We have a mother and child program to facilitate, I mean, to avoid mortality of the mother and the newborn at time of delivery, which is very high. And we need to build bridges, of course. This is our car. We never know what's going to happen. Sometimes it's good, sometimes not. And so we build 18 bridges, only eight suspension bridges and a few smaller ones. This is a place for the elderly. Report an error in the passage at 1:01:59 Highlight the passage at 1:01:59

1:02:29 And they are quite happy to be there, obviously. It's a Tibetan doctor who is not an ophthalmologist and not a dentist either. The home for the elderly, we have a few of those. Report an error in the passage at 1:02:29 Highlight the passage at 1:02:29

1:02:43 And then this is, you know, you can build a school like that for $25,000 and all the village kids now have a school. And so this is a Karuṇā girl. And, you know... And she, you know, it just happened like that. I was visiting a clinic and then I went to the kitchen to get a cup of tea and there was this little girl there eating a Tsampa. And I just took a shot like that and it turned out to be a Karuṇā girl. Report an error in the passage at 1:02:43 Highlight the passage at 1:02:43

1:03:08 So I thought, well, let's find her again, you know, like Steve McCurry looked for his Afghani girl. I said, I'm going to look for my Tibetan girl. But then last, the year before, I asked for her. She said, oh, she's about two days walk away in the mountains. I thought it would be difficult. And then this year she was around. So then I showed her a photo. I said, you know, this photo is all over the world. Report an error in the passage at 1:03:08 Highlight the passage at 1:03:08

1:03:32 You know, it means like nothing to her. My photo all over the world. She could not figure out what it means. She could not relate to the idea that her photo was all over the world. Anyway, oh, I thought it was the next one. You will see at the end I have her now. So this is some school that we made. Report an error in the passage at 1:03:32 Highlight the passage at 1:03:32

1:03:52 Quite a few. So in Tibet, this is a philosophical college. It's the day of the exams. So they should not copy on each other. This one guy is trying hard to look, but it's a bit far, I guess. And this one is hiding his copy. So we try to revive traditional crafts, pottery and statue making, painting. We intervene in the tragedies areas like the earthquake of Yushu in 2010. Report an error in the passage at 1:03:52 Highlight the passage at 1:03:52

1:04:24 We bought six trucks of goods and we helped 3,000 people during the winter. The monk saved this little girl who was three days under the rubbles. She meets her uncle now. And this year we are building, it started now, an anti-seismic school, anti-earthquake school at 4,000 meters high in eastern Tibet. Report an error in the passage at 1:04:24 Highlight the passage at 1:04:24

1:04:47 So here's the Karuṇā girl, Shantideva, and a few portraits. Oh, this guy, he was wondering why I was taking his photo with the big telephoto lens, but he was not sure that I was taking his photo or someone's photo, so I did a click and I looked and then he changed his mind. Report an error in the passage at 1:04:47 Highlight the passage at 1:04:47

1:05:06 So that's called the birth of a smile. Report an error in the passage at 1:05:06 Highlight the passage at 1:05:06

1:05:13 And that's nice new fashion. People are quite happy, and so the kids are. This doesn't need, I don't know, aesthetic surgery or something. They don't care too much. Report an error in the passage at 1:05:13 Highlight the passage at 1:05:13

1:05:28 Okay, now a few things about the environment, where I spoke during the conference, but this is part of the application. This morning you spoke about engagement. So why, if we grow altruism, to what should we apply it to? So first to a caring economics, of course, reducing inequality. Then to a better life, also reducing inequalities and make sure that the life at work and other places. And also... Report an error in the passage at 1:05:28 Highlight the passage at 1:05:28

1:05:57 Caring for future generations because we are sort of at the edge of the precipice. So I'm not going to go in great detail, but you know, in 1900, if you look at the planetary boundaries of safety within which humanity can continue to flourish for 50,000 years, if you look at the different factors that were not yet fully measured but we could get a guess, even though it was already the Industrial Revolution, not much was happening. Now in 1950, What we call the great acceleration, the entry into Anthropocene, the age where human beings are so active, already you can see some looming of the climate change and others. Report an error in the passage at 1:05:57 Highlight the passage at 1:05:57

1:06:36 In 2010, we are vastly over safety limits for several factors. Loss of biodiversity, 30 % of all species will disappear by 2050 if we just continue just the way we are doing now. Nothing accelerated more, just simply... How many we lose every year? In 2050, 30 % of all species will be gone forever. So that's a big problem. Population has increased, water use, all that. Report an error in the passage at 1:06:36 Highlight the passage at 1:06:36

1:07:09 You know, you can see the great acceleration for almost everything. So loss of rainforest, biodiversity loss. So we are in the Anthropocene now. That means the age of the humans where we have a major impact. And also... One of them is the methane that comes from permafrost, but also mostly from industrial farming, raising livestock. And that has so much increased and it's completely inhuman. Report an error in the passage at 1:07:09 Highlight the passage at 1:07:09

1:07:37 And it's the second cause for global warming because after the housing and before transportation. It's also done by the rich countries. USA eats 130 kilos of meat per year per inhabitants versus... 3 kilos in India. You can see the difference. So it's present to the GDP. It's a great social injustice. So first of all, and now I think the new IPCC figure is 14%, but still it's very big. Report an error in the passage at 1:07:37 Highlight the passage at 1:07:37

1:08:07 Then it's a social injustice because it takes 10 kilos of vegetable protein to make 1 kilo of meat, and that vegetable protein usually comes from poor countries. There's 700 million tons of grain that comes from Latin America and Africa, transported to North America and Europe, Grow this livestock in terribly tragic conditions. And so it's social injustice. And of course, so that's what I said. Report an error in the passage at 1:08:07 Highlight the passage at 1:08:07

1:08:35 And of course, this is the first victims of obviously the animals. So this number is probably a bit high. It's probably more 70 billions than you estimate. But 70 billions land animals kill every year for our consumption. That's completely mad. And that means 1.5 million of millions of sea animals. So, you know, just every year, again and again, every day, all year round, year after year, we do that. So it's kind of a very schizophrenic attitude that we promote human rights, the right of the child, the right of the woman, the right of everyone, minorities and so forth. Report an error in the passage at 1:08:35 Highlight the passage at 1:08:35

1:09:12 But when it comes to animal, of course, if it's our dog, we won't serve it for dinner. But any other one, you know, number don't matter. Purely utilitarian, they are sausage machine, that's all they are good for. Of course, they are sentient beings, and just far from the eyes, far from the heart, we don't want to see, we don't want to hear, but it happens every day, all the time. Report an error in the passage at 1:09:12 Highlight the passage at 1:09:12

1:09:35 So we should be aware of that, otherwise we can't have a coherent ethical system. So as George Bernasho said, animals are my friends and I don't eat my friends, full stop. Report an error in the passage at 1:09:35 Highlight the passage at 1:09:35

1:09:45 So animals can also teach us even empathy. If they have empathy, why not us? And they can save each other as well. Report an error in the passage at 1:09:45 Highlight the passage at 1:09:45

1:09:57 What we have, it didn't come out of the blue. So His Holiness, of course, the Parliament embodying of compassion and kindness. Report an error in the passage at 1:09:57 Highlight the passage at 1:09:57

1:10:08 Here is again a Karuṇā girl, but now here is she about nine years later. And then I found her name because I didn't know. She's called Beautiful Turquoise Ocean. Report an error in the passage at 1:10:08 Highlight the passage at 1:10:08

1:10:26 So here is our website. And so that was a little bit interlude. Now let's go back to meditation. Thank you. Report an error in the passage at 1:10:26 Highlight the passage at 1:10:26

1:10:45 So we can stop the projector maybe. Report an error in the passage at 1:10:45 Highlight the passage at 1:10:45

1:11:06 So, for the time we have left. Report an error in the passage at 1:11:06 Highlight the passage at 1:11:06

1:11:13 Sorry, those things take always too much more time than expected. Report an error in the passage at 1:11:13 Highlight the passage at 1:11:13

1:11:21 So this morning we mentioned a little bit about the loving kindness and unconditional benevolence. Of course, here we are not in a... Regular conference hall, Report an error in the passage at 1:11:21 Highlight the passage at 1:11:21

1:11:38 but, you know, a Dharma center. So most, I guess, most of you are familiar with those notions and especially in your tradition, you know, the grounded part and developing, you know, the bodhicitta and before that preparing to develop the bodhicitta by meditating on the four sort of boundless ideas, boundless love. Report an error in the passage at 1:11:38 Highlight the passage at 1:11:38

1:12:07 Boundless compassion, boundless rejoicing and boundless impartiality. Why boundless? Because sentient beings are boundless in number and you don't want to limit. Why should we limit the scope of loving kindness mentally? Oh, I can only develop a certain number of beings. That would be so strange. And then because it is Addressed to boundless sentient beings, then it's also boundless qualities ensue from it. So it's also boundless purification, boundless qualities, boundless achievements. Report an error in the passage at 1:12:07 Highlight the passage at 1:12:07

1:12:50 So that's why we call them boundless. So those are the sort of components that lead to a very benevolent mind and then to taking the bodhicitta vow. That is, may achieve enlightenment in order to gain the capacity for benefiting sentient beings. So, why having four? In fact, more or less, they are all somehow included in the other, but there are different emphasizes, and also sometimes we tend to be stuck or to deviate in some aspect of it, and we need some kind of antidote or sort of... Report an error in the passage at 1:12:50 Highlight the passage at 1:12:50

1:13:34 Turning around so that they all can grow together. So usually sometimes the teaching begins with impartiality, sometimes with loving kindness, which is most common. Report an error in the passage at 1:13:34 Highlight the passage at 1:13:34

1:13:49 And so loving kindness is just the metri, champa. In Tibetan it's just a wish that may all sentient beings find happiness and the cause of happiness. Now, the cause of happiness is not just transient satisfaction or pleasure. It's much deeper, of course. It's the most profound cause of happiness, like wisdom and inner freedom and sort of bringing altruistic love to its ultimate point and realizing the nature of reality. Report an error in the passage at 1:13:49 Highlight the passage at 1:13:49

1:14:29 That's the call of lasting happiness. So, of course, also the temporary happiness. But mostly the long-lasting happiness, which is beyond the notion of the transient pleasure and displeasure. Report an error in the passage at 1:14:29 Highlight the passage at 1:14:29

1:14:46 So for that we just begin with an easy object so that we have no difficulty to generate that. So it could be a beautiful child that comes to us with a complete trust and looking at us with an open... Bright eyes like this little Karuṇā girl. And then what else do we feel? May she be happy, may she be safe, may she flourish in life. Report an error in the passage at 1:14:46 Highlight the passage at 1:14:46

1:15:18 And so we make those wishes and it fills our mind with a certain quality of mind. And then of course we can extend that, isn't it? To other girls like her or to other children or to other sentient beings, to other living beings. And why stop anywhere? Why not include everyone in our benevolence? So let's try that. At some point, once the mental state is very vivid, very clear and full in our mind, and of course we can refer to a little girl or to anyone or to a dear person, a parent, an animal, but it's also self-sustaining. Report an error in the passage at 1:15:18 Highlight the passage at 1:15:18

1:16:03 There's a quality, like a perfume in the air. It's still there when you somehow put back the plug. So even the object is not necessarily there, this kind of strong feeling of loving kindness can still be there, lingering in your mind. So then the only difference between that and feeling that unconditionally when you are in front of someone for whom you feel that spontaneously, instead of being something transient for a few seconds, then something else will come, you will think of something else, but you don't really usually... Report an error in the passage at 1:16:03 Highlight the passage at 1:16:03

1:16:39 Keep that feeling continuously for 10 minutes. It's not like how we function in life. But here, the difference with cultivating and meditation is we will try to maintain that for a while, whether it's 10 minutes, half an hour or more. And how we do so? Well, first generating it, then sort of monitoring its quality. Report an error in the passage at 1:16:39 Highlight the passage at 1:16:39

1:17:01 if it's sort of become If it fades away, then you just revive it, either bringing back the object or just revive the feeling. And then if you are distracted, come back to it. Report an error in the passage at 1:17:01 Highlight the passage at 1:17:01

1:17:14 If you become dull, again, you sort of wake up. And if it sort of loses its color or its intensity, re-intensify it. So you kind of try to nurture it, to sustain it, to correct it. Report an error in the passage at 1:17:14 Highlight the passage at 1:17:14

1:17:32 So that it remains as clear, as vivid, intense, but without intense in terms of vividness, but not in terms of tension, just like it should be like an intense color, very, very present. And then stable, so that it doesn't sort of vanish and wanes and goes, try to maintain it at its best all the time. Report an error in the passage at 1:17:32 Highlight the passage at 1:17:32

1:17:59 So that's... What the practice of meditation is about, so that you nurture that and maintain that for a certain time, like ten minutes and so forth. So let's do it for a few minutes, and then we'll shift to another step. Report an error in the passage at 1:17:59 Highlight the passage at 1:17:59

· · · silence, 5 minutes

1:23:06 Then it may turn, for instance. So first, extend it from the few to the many, from the close. Ones to the strangers and even to those persons who are harmful because in that case to extend this kind of altruistic love to say a person who has harmed a lot of people like in the worst case a bloody dictator is not to like that person, is not to condone in any way that person's actions. Report an error in the passage at 1:23:06 Highlight the passage at 1:23:06

1:23:47 But you see, love and compassion is not a kind of reward for good behavior. It's addressing every single cause of suffering, whatever it might be, however it might manifest. So obviously, hatred, cruelty, indifference, greed that motivates those who harm others, those are cause of suffering. So what else could you wish that may those causes be dispelled? Report an error in the passage at 1:23:47 Highlight the passage at 1:23:47

1:24:18 That kind of wish you can make just in the same way that a skillful physician, the more the patient is sick, the more the physician will try to find the right cure. Report an error in the passage at 1:24:18 Highlight the passage at 1:24:18

1:24:32 If the patient is a bit agitated, he's not going to take a stick and beat him down. He's going to try to find the right remedy. So with this in mind, there's nothing wrong. There's not too much asking to extend loving kindness and compassion. To a very difficult and harmful person because the goal is not to please that person, to wish that person success, to facilitate or tolerate his or her actions, but to him at the very cause that make that person become like that. Report an error in the passage at 1:24:32 Highlight the passage at 1:24:32

1:25:07 And even there's not immediate solution, but still the wish can be there and then find a way to do so. So let's try to extend this loving kindness. And then if loving kindness turns into some kind of attachment, then try to shift to compassion. That means, basically, compassion is the same thing as benevolence, but it's what happens to benevolence when it meets with suffering. Report an error in the passage at 1:25:07 Highlight the passage at 1:25:07

1:25:35 Instead of the wish, may sentient beings find happiness and the cause of happiness. It's just the other side of the coin. May sentient beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering. So let's visualize this intense suffering, human beings being parted from loved ones, being confronted with those who harm them, being sort of lost in a refugee camp or something, terrible sickness, the agony of death and the agony of millions of animals who are trapped in iron clothes. Report an error in the passage at 1:25:35 Highlight the passage at 1:25:35

1:26:14 Treated in an incredible way. They start to be dismembered when they are still conscious. And all those massacres we can hear of in different countries of innocent people and so forth. So feel boundless compassion. May the suffering and the cause of those suffering be dispelled. And Report an error in the passage at 1:26:14 Highlight the passage at 1:26:14

· · · silence, 3 minutes

1:29:55 then it may happen that we Report an error in the passage at 1:29:55 Highlight the passage at 1:29:55

1:30:02 are overwhelmed by the number, magnitude, intensity. Recurrence of all those sufferings everywhere and feel disheartened, powerless. So to avoid that pitfall, then we move, we shift to rejoicing. This kind of celebration of goodness that exists, of course, in the world. Not only now, but even in the past. Report an error in the passage at 1:30:02 Highlight the passage at 1:30:02

1:30:38 It's not an obligation to rejoice. Gandhi's action, but it's altruistic because we fully rejoice in their activities. Nobody's going to reproach us if we don't do it. Report an error in the passage at 1:30:38 Highlight the passage at 1:30:38

1:30:52 But from our heart, we're so happy, fully rejoice what they have done for sentient beings and what others do now, those who have great capacities, great qualities, great dedication for others at all levels of society. Report an error in the passage at 1:30:52 Highlight the passage at 1:30:52

1:31:10 The unsung heroes of compassion and those who are more public figures who do great things. So rejoice from one's heart and also the banality of goodness that everyone does in their daily life. So rejoice in that and wish that it may increase further instead of declining. So that's this kind of celebrating sympathetic joy. Report an error in the passage at 1:31:10 Highlight the passage at 1:31:10

1:31:40 Rejoicing in others' good qualities and deeds. Report an error in the passage at 1:31:40 Highlight the passage at 1:31:40

· · · silence, 1 minute

1:33:12 And, of course, this also could sort of slip or deviate into some kind of, you know, too naive vision of what's happening. Also, it could be partial. We just rejoice in someone we like very much, you know, success, but be upset with others' success anyway. So the rejoicing... And the compassion and the loving kindness have to be impartial. Report an error in the passage at 1:33:12 Highlight the passage at 1:33:12

1:33:47 The boundlessness aspect of those three cannot go together with partiality. How can we say half of humanity or human but no animals or all sentient beings except those 12 that cannot stand? Or something like that. Or everyone except my neighbor. It's always the most difficult. All sentient beings but not my neighbors. Or, you know, all have a very nice abstract feeling of compassion. Report an error in the passage at 1:33:47 Highlight the passage at 1:33:47

1:34:22 You know, all for the Buddha and everyone for themselves. So something like that. So now, of course, it should be impartial. So, like the sun that shines on everything, equally on joyful faces. Report an error in the passage at 1:34:22 Highlight the passage at 1:34:22

1:34:39 Angry faces, a heap of garbage, a piece of gold. The sun doesn't shine preferentially. And even we think, oh yes, but how come? We certainly have people closer to us in life. We have this kind of special relation. Of course, of course. Different reasons, karma, family, our life. We are closer for someone. But how can we combine that with impartiality? Well, in fact... Report an error in the passage at 1:34:39 Highlight the passage at 1:34:39

1:35:10 If you keep the example of the sun, it's not so difficult. Because look, the sun shines on everything, but if the sun is kind of the compassion or the love that you try to generate, then there are people just closer to you, geographically, physically. So those clothes, they get more warmed. But the fact that they get more warmed doesn't come out of discrimination. Report an error in the passage at 1:35:10 Highlight the passage at 1:35:10

1:35:41 It doesn't come out and say, oh, I'm only going to shine on those. No, sun shines on everything, and those who are very close, they get more warm, that's all, because they are close to you in life. Report an error in the passage at 1:35:41 Highlight the passage at 1:35:41

1:35:54 And in fact, if you were to say, oh, I can only shine light on those, you can imagine the sun will be so diminished if it only shines a few rays, just on a few people, on your dog only. Report an error in the passage at 1:35:54 Highlight the passage at 1:35:54

1:36:11 Then, not only it will not shine, Unnecessarily on the rest, but it would not be so warm for those persons also because the whole quality of the sun will be damaged. So to fully shine on all directions and then you have people who are close to you, that's compatible with this notion of impartiality. So let's try to generate that in our minds. And impartiality is not a cold stuff, you know. It's not I don't care for anybody. Report an error in the passage at 1:36:11 Highlight the passage at 1:36:11

1:36:44 He said, I care for everybody. And then you cannot physically do something for everyone, but at least the potential is there. Anyone who comes in the field of your activities, the field of your intention, the field of your attention, then automatically they will be lightened by this sun and the benevolence is ready to arise to them. Report an error in the passage at 1:36:44 Highlight the passage at 1:36:44

1:37:05 So it's not vague, something abstract. Sort of deluded out, sort of vague things, sort of standing somewhere in space, good for everyone. It's this complete readiness. It is not necessarily an immediate object, but whenever the object manifests, then benevolence will be there or impartiality will be there. So let's try to do that for a while. Report an error in the passage at 1:37:05 Highlight the passage at 1:37:05

· · · silence, 2 minutes

1:39:37 Then those four, you can alternate from one to the other, as just briefly mentioned. This, it leads to the bodhicitta. First to the, basically what we call laksam, the perfect intention, disposition of mind, benevolent, altruistic. Then to bodhicitta, which is defined as the wish to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of others, so that we gain the capacity to relieve the suffering of others. Report an error in the passage at 1:39:37 Highlight the passage at 1:39:37

1:40:13 So in the Mahāyāna, Buddhahood is the achievement for oneself, but the main reason to achieve Buddhahood is that we gain the capacity to free others. So not just like, of course, oneself, which is very limited, even though Buddhahood itself is infinite in wisdom. But in terms of activities, then if it's just us, of course, it's very limited. Report an error in the passage at 1:40:13 Highlight the passage at 1:40:13

1:40:43 So the twofold aspect of Buddhahood. It's realizing the ultimate nature as one's own realization and expressing that in compassionate activities for the benefit of beings. So that wish is called bodhicitta, the supreme enlightened mind or altruistic enlightened mind. And that comes from having cultivated the four boundless ones. Report an error in the passage at 1:40:43 Highlight the passage at 1:40:43

1:41:08 So let's make this powerful vow that throughout this life... For those who have this vision for many, many existence to come, I will try my very best to dedicate myself to progress, to enlightenment, to benefit beings and on the way, of course, to as much as I can to benefit beings as well. Report an error in the passage at 1:41:08 Highlight the passage at 1:41:08

· · · silence, 1 minute

1:42:48 Then, like this morning, before maybe having a few questions, we can dedicate the merit of this practice and the day very clearly. Like leaving a clear imprint or like putting a seal on something for Report an error in the passage at 1:42:48 Highlight the passage at 1:42:48

1:43:09 the benefit of all sentient beings, not only human beings, so that temporarily they may be free from their suffering and ultimately they may wish the omniscience and the capacity of enlightenment for their own freedom and that of others. Report an error in the passage at 1:43:09 Highlight the passage at 1:43:09

1:43:32 So that's the... And again, this allows... Continuation of that goodness that we generated. Otherwise it's like a snowflake on a hot stone, it dissipates. A snowflake in the big lake continues as long as the lake will be there. So then we dedicate the best we can. Report an error in the passage at 1:43:32 Highlight the passage at 1:43:32

· · · silence, 1 minute

1:44:37 So those trees sometimes call in the teachings the three supreme ideas or the three sort of things that make a framework. First, generating the motivation, then focusing entirely on the main practice, if we can, seeing it as devoid of intrinsic existence, and then finally the dedication. So whether it's a practice, whether it's an activity, that makes it very complete and more powerful. So then, we still have ten minutes or so, so if we have further questions, please don't hesitate. Report an error in the passage at 1:44:37 Highlight the passage at 1:44:37

1:45:25 Okay, let's start here and there. Okay. If you have a problem, say, with chronic pain, and that can become really both an obstacle and a distraction in practice, combined with, for example, if you have to take medication for that, perhaps another kind of obstacle barrier. I wonder if there are any sort of suggestions for how to transform that. Report an error in the passage at 1:45:25 Highlight the passage at 1:45:25

1:45:58 or barrier into a tool or an opportunity. Sure. So pain, you know, pain study, there are many aspects to it. And of course the most difficult pain is the one that seems to have no meaning. For instance a sportman, he may go to extreme pain to run a marathon and that's okay. Report an error in the passage at 1:45:58 Highlight the passage at 1:45:58

1:46:25 But if he falls and hurts himself, there's no meaning because it's not what he was looking for, then it becomes disturbing. So lack of obvious meaning that we are not having pain for a purpose that we care for, or like we get pain for a surgical intervention or for helping someone. So that's imbued with meaning, so it's easy to. And then not seeing... Report an error in the passage at 1:46:25 Highlight the passage at 1:46:25

1:46:54 First, the impractability of the pain in terms of when it will come is also very disturbing. And then the impractability of it stopping. So when we don't see the end of it, that's very, very difficult because it's kind of nagging. So that's the most difficult case, obviously. So now, of course, the type of meditation that we described before was done with intense pain but short and you know it's going to stop. Report an error in the passage at 1:46:54 Highlight the passage at 1:46:54

1:47:25 Very clearly. Of course, the fact that it does have an effect shows that that can also be used, but how much that will be helpful over the long term, that's to be seen. But at least we know there's a tool there that what happens with other studies, which I didn't have time to present, is that, for instance, when you... Report an error in the passage at 1:47:25 Highlight the passage at 1:47:25

1:47:53 When you know you're going to get this sharp heat or electricity, usually the heat because it comes gradually and then it's very intense for 10 seconds, like searing, burning pain. So the non-meditators, what happens, the area of the brain that has to do with pain is already at the top, even much before. Report an error in the passage at 1:47:53 Highlight the passage at 1:47:53

1:48:15 The moment it starts getting warm, the nose is getting very hot and they start, not freaking out, but... Activation full blast almost doesn't increase further when it's very strong pain. So the anticipatory sort of revulsions to pain is much greater than in meditators, where as long as it's not very strong, they don't basically react at all. Report an error in the passage at 1:48:15 Highlight the passage at 1:48:15

1:48:38 Then the clear perception of the pain, then when it sews down, they're back to normal. Where the other ones, again, a lot of waves, you know. So painful and all that. So that... Reduce the anticipation. Intensity will be the same. Reduce the unpleasantness subjective experience and reduce the after effect. Report an error in the passage at 1:48:38 Highlight the passage at 1:48:38

1:49:00 So for, say, if it's like pain that comes again and again but is not constant, it's shown that at least it works with meditations to some extent to reduce the reaction against it. four, six. Report an error in the passage at 1:49:00 Highlight the passage at 1:49:00

1:49:18 They're just not wanting the pain by all means, being upset after it came. So all those emotional upheavals, of course, it's easy because, again, we know that it's not going to last. But at least on the episode of sharp pain, it helps, we know that. Compassion also seems to do in the lab. Now, of course, not all pains are like that. Report an error in the passage at 1:49:18 Highlight the passage at 1:49:18

1:49:40 Sometimes it's more, you know... Months after months and it's more debilitating and it takes even a much greater sort of strength of mind to deal with that. So then I think more methods which are linked with deeper aspects of practice can the teacher's advice to do is to at least try to imbue with some meaning. Report an error in the passage at 1:49:40 Highlight the passage at 1:49:40

1:50:10 And the meaning is not just, you know, That's my fate and this and that. It's really trying to link it with compassion through the Tonglen, the sending and giving meditation. Because there, in fact, at every pain, you can try to give a meaning by doing this meditation in which when you breathe out, I mean, not only there's pain, but there's also some good aspect in one's life. Report an error in the passage at 1:50:10 Highlight the passage at 1:50:10

1:50:42 There's some joys that we have, some moments of peace, of serenity, of quality of whatever, loving kindness and all. And all those good potential and qualities we have, when we breathe out, we send it to others, thinking that they receive it entirely, not like they share a piece of it, but everyone gets it entirely. Report an error in the passage at 1:50:42 Highlight the passage at 1:50:42

1:51:10 And then... We think, if we have pain especially, that, well, there are so many other beings who have pain, sometimes maybe even much bigger than mine. So when I breathe in, may I have the courageous compassion that I'm going to extract that from them, and then it will be on my pain as if my pain stands for their pain because I've sort of taken it out. Report an error in the passage at 1:51:10 Highlight the passage at 1:51:10

1:51:36 So you visualize that. Of course, it's not like a magic process. There are stories in the past where there's an actual effect when great masters do it, but I think at our level, it's really imbuing the experience of pain by compassion and thinking that we are not alone and wishing that if a mother could extract the pain from her child and assume it... Report an error in the passage at 1:51:36 Highlight the passage at 1:51:36

1:52:02 And she would not feel the pain as a burden, but as a relief that her beloved child is not suffering because she could take the pain off. And we did that even in MRI machine. And when we were thinking that, OK, I'm receiving this electric shock, but I visualized my dear mother. She was an experimenter, but I was thinking of my mother and say, when I receive it, she's not receiving it. Report an error in the passage at 1:52:02 Highlight the passage at 1:52:02

1:52:23 So I fully rejoice. And it was so much less painful. So likewise, if you exchange, extracting the... Pain of the other. Adding it to yours, in fact, instead of the fact of adding it to yours and thinking that you remove it from the other, surprisingly, it's not adding to your burden, but adding their pain to your pain will actually diminish your experience because it gives it a meaning, you sort of rejoice that you could apply this compassion. Report an error in the passage at 1:52:23 Highlight the passage at 1:52:23

1:52:54 So, some of our teachers say that to do that makes the pain meaningful because It is a means to train compassion. You realize that you are not the only one. You wish strongly that you could somehow contribute to remove others' pain. Your pain stands for their pain, so you rejoice that maybe they will be free from theirs, at least mentally. So that element which is rejoicing, which is a sense of gratification, is part of those positive mental states that... Report an error in the passage at 1:52:54 Highlight the passage at 1:52:54

1:53:31 It seems to reduce the unwantedness aspect of the pain. I don't want the pain by all means. Now you sort of assume it fully and imbue it with some meaning. So there are many cases of practitioners who, when they had to suffer either chronic pain or the pain of time of dying, there was a... A nephew of Digo Kensei Mboshe was a great gesche in Drepong in South India and a wonderful practitioner. Report an error in the passage at 1:53:31 Highlight the passage at 1:53:31

1:54:08 Before, he was dying in difficult circumstances in the hospital and he sent a letter to Kensei Mboshe that I'm dying, but since a few days, all I do is the exchange of happiness and suffering. And he said, I'm completely at peace. So I think it's... Report an error in the passage at 1:54:08 Highlight the passage at 1:54:08

1:54:28 At least the best we can do, given the circumstances, to connect it with our practice. And again, also, there are many aspects, of course. Try as much as we can to see that, you know, sensations of so many kinds, but still the awareness beneath those is unchanging, if we can see that. That awareness is awareness of the pain, it's not in pain itself, just as when we are aware of anxiety, we are not anxious. Report an error in the passage at 1:54:28 Highlight the passage at 1:54:28

1:54:59 I mean the awareness is not anxious, it's just aware. So we develop that mindfulness awareness component that is untouched. That's a part of our experience that is not touched by the quality of the experience, whether it's anxiety, pain, fear or something. So that pure awareness is just aware of the pain. So that's at least a space we can try to relate if the pain is not too overwhelming. Report an error in the passage at 1:54:59 Highlight the passage at 1:54:59

1:55:26 Of course, all this is easier said than done. But at least there are tools that have been proven to be useful. Some other one that you find in the Vajrayana teachings is to imagine, for instance, that there's a particular spot in Spain that the Buddha or Pamasambhava or your root teacher sits there on the lotus and from this body flows a warm sort of... Report an error in the passage at 1:55:26 Highlight the passage at 1:55:26

1:55:56 Nectar in the form of warm light, kind of orange color like honey or ambrosia that is warming, that is blissful and that completely permeates the area of the pain and somehow try to imbue that perception of pain with the perception of bliss that you generate adding to it and it has also a sort of mitigating effect. Report an error in the passage at 1:55:56 Highlight the passage at 1:55:56

1:56:25 So those are different methods. Report an error in the passage at 1:56:25 Highlight the passage at 1:56:25

1:56:30 Of course, then we have to see how it works for oneself. It depends, I guess, of the intensity of our experience or degree of preparedness and so forth. Report an error in the passage at 1:56:30 Highlight the passage at 1:56:30

1:56:44 There was someone there first. Yes? Report an error in the passage at 1:56:44 Highlight the passage at 1:56:44

1:56:54 To Report an error in the passage at 1:56:54 Highlight the passage at 1:56:54

1:56:58 what? does. Report an error in the passage at 1:56:58 Highlight the passage at 1:56:58

1:56:54 with with disabilities? Report an error in the passage at 1:56:54 Highlight the passage at 1:56:54

1:57:08 apply the capacity for enlightenment. Report an error in the passage at 1:57:08 Highlight the passage at 1:57:08

1:57:17 So you see, of course, you know, I remember on a few occasions this type of question were asked with Soliness when I was with him as translator or something. And then usually, you know, he doesn't provide a ready-made answer because there's so many cases, so many degrees. Report an error in the passage at 1:57:17 Highlight the passage at 1:57:17

1:57:39 In normal cases, he would say there's always some potential for change, but of course it depends on the severity. Grease. Report an error in the passage at 1:57:39 Highlight the passage at 1:57:39

1:57:47 the handicap, of the impairment Neuroplasticity and the training are wonderful things, but there has to be a minimum of engagement for the training or at least an access to something that will trigger a change. So again, it all depends on how much the person has the capacity to engage into something. Report an error in the passage at 1:57:47 Highlight the passage at 1:57:47

1:58:16 A priori, there are, of course, there are impairments which cannot overcome. Some, that training will change. Neuroplasticity, for certain handicap, can replace. For instance, it's well known that people who are blind have a much more sharper auditive spectrum. And people who are deaf also have a better peripheral vision. Report an error in the passage at 1:58:16 Highlight the passage at 1:58:16

1:58:44 and that the... People who become, for instance, parallelized on one side, if you plaster, they can move from the other side. If you plaster this side so that they don't use the limbs that can move, you force them to move with the one that can hardly move. There's much faster recovery because they have to force the neuroplasticity to occur. Report an error in the passage at 1:58:44 Highlight the passage at 1:58:44

1:59:14 There are wonderful things done. There was a person in Madison who, a blind person, he was putting a plaque with hundreds of different spots and it was linked with a video camera on the forehead. The images were translated into a tactile image. Within a week, the people were translating that in some kind of visual perception. Report an error in the passage at 1:59:14 Highlight the passage at 1:59:14

1:59:38 They would be able to catch a ball rolling on the table in front of themselves. Purely tactile became sort of visual. And then after some time they could function going downstairs, climbing on the bus, they would sort of see a different way. And of course the brain was highly active to process that, to create that neuroplasticity that allowed them to refine that sort of tactile vision. Report an error in the passage at 1:59:38 Highlight the passage at 1:59:38

2:00:08 Images translated into sensation. Back to movement. So you see the brain is capable of a lot of things. Sometimes the potential is there. Sometimes the impairment is too severe. Some faculties are just not there. So it all depends on sound advice of whoever helped to deal with that. So it's very difficult to give a general advice or something. Report an error in the passage at 2:00:08 Highlight the passage at 2:00:08

2:00:47 It doesn't prevent from doing something. It's always due to a cause and effect, you know, whether that cause goes a long way back or more recent. There's nothing that escapes cause and effect. Karma is just a kind of subset of the cause and effect that has to do with intention. But, you know, it's no more written in stone than any other cause and effect because it's... Report an error in the passage at 2:00:47 Highlight the passage at 2:00:47

2:01:16 Result of a number of causes and conditions and then impermanence is there. So of course sometimes something is momentarily drastically affected and then maybe there's no solution in the immediate. But nothing is permanent. So that's one thing at least. So of course karma is part of that. But so are other causes, you know. Report an error in the passage at 2:01:16 Highlight the passage at 2:01:16

2:01:37 There could be strong karmic influence and strong genetic influence. So that mixture is all cause and effect. So it doesn't mean because the ultimate cause, according to Buddhism, could be in the past life that you cannot do anything. It's just like the cause is longer in time, but you could always repair something that is broken, whether it is broken for 6,000 years or broken for the last five minutes. Report an error in the passage at 2:01:37 Highlight the passage at 2:01:37

2:02:02 So if the vase is broken, it could be long history or short history, but you can repair it or not repair it, depending on the circumstances. Report an error in the passage at 2:02:02 Highlight the passage at 2:02:02

2:02:21 the subjects of loving kindness. Yes? Report an error in the passage at 2:02:21 Highlight the passage at 2:02:21

2:02:31 The distance effect? Not quite. Not yet. There have been studies with prayers that were not very conclusive. I mean, if people were told people were praying for them, they felt better. But if they were told people were praying and nobody was praying, they feel better also. And if they were not told that someone was praying, that they didn't feel too much better. Report an error in the passage at 2:02:31 Highlight the passage at 2:02:31

2:02:55 So, not very conclusive. But, you know. I guess if it's only less press for us, I feel quite happy about it. Maybe I'm not sure. Well, I don't know, but it's definitely not being studied. Report an error in the passage at 2:02:55 Highlight the passage at 2:02:55

2:03:11 Thank you. So, okay, maybe last. Okay, one question there. Three last questions. Okay, very good. Fast one. Report an error in the passage at 2:03:11 Highlight the passage at 2:03:11

2:03:25 their body, and they went along the road of cars, they heard everyone's comment, and then they went, and everyone was a bit, oh, I'm going to be caught here all this time. No one was very sympathetic, and then they saw a big white light shooting out of the car, and there was someone praying, and they heard their prayers, and they saw they went so far up into the sky that they couldn't see anything. Report an error in the passage at 2:03:25 Highlight the passage at 2:03:25

2:03:46 No, things happen, huh? The Milarepa was flying through the air. Wonderful things. I'm very eager to see some of those. Yes? Report an error in the passage at 2:03:46 Highlight the passage at 2:03:46

2:04:02 think dementia is a major problem with older people. One in five people are over 65. you know any research that in meditation preventing dementia? There's not yet research with meditation. There's research clearly with mental activity, mentally active. That's clear. And some diet issues. There was a strange study that people who... Report an error in the passage at 2:04:02 Highlight the passage at 2:04:02

2:04:31 I don't know, maybe it's for their way of life, but anyway, there was a good study done over 20 years with 20,000 subjects. People who are drinking five times a week, you know, a vegetable or fresh fruit juice and having more like, you know, vegetable diet were 20 % less subject to Alzheimer. Things like that. There's a bunch of studies, but mentally active, yes, for sure. Report an error in the passage at 2:04:31 Highlight the passage at 2:04:31

2:04:59 I mentioned a few times to my scientist friend that, you know, in monasteries we know a lot of people because they're passing by and people come and family comes and they bring their parents and sick people. So it's a place where a lot of turnover, let's say. And over time they all come to see a teacher, ask for blessing. So I've seen a quite large number of, say, 80 years old practitioners or something, which you think that in Europe... Report an error in the passage at 2:04:59 Highlight the passage at 2:04:59

2:05:26 80 years old is about 15 % of dementia and 90 years old is almost 35%. And I only saw very, very few. So is it due to that? Is it due because they don't bring them? But it seems that you see that quite often in the West, I mean in Europe, much less I've seen it in the Himalayas. I don't know if it's genetics, if it's true or not. So I suggested someone to study that, but you can't do everything. Report an error in the passage at 2:05:26 Highlight the passage at 2:05:26

2:05:56 So, but there's things like that. So, last one. Report an error in the passage at 2:05:56 Highlight the passage at 2:05:56

2:06:09 Yes. So, yes. So, when I spoke this morning of this empathic distress, when I did experience that after one hour in the MRI machine, I thought, well, you know, in the teachings they tell you you should meditate on the suffering until it becomes unbearable. And perhaps, because when I then, you know, after one hour I was sort of prevented from using compassion. And I did. Report an error in the passage at 2:06:09 Highlight the passage at 2:06:09

2:06:34 It felt much greater compassion because I had sort of really thought on the suffering and only on the suffering. So it was unbearable. Fortunately, of course, the compassion was followed up. So I thought, seeing how intense was the compassion I felt at that moment, more than usual, let's say, I thought maybe when we say that in the teaching that we should carefully ponder the suffering, we should quite do that for a while. Report an error in the passage at 2:06:34 Highlight the passage at 2:06:34

2:07:02 Because otherwise we say, oh, they're all suffering, and big, nice compassion on top of it immediately. So maybe it isn't really vivid enough. And I think our strength of compassion would probably benefit if we were more serious of imagining, as the teaching says, to really visualize intensely all those suffering. Report an error in the passage at 2:07:02 Highlight the passage at 2:07:02

2:07:26 And then until it becomes unbearable, then the compassion will be so much more. Sometimes the scientists ask you, what do you learn from working with us? I remember telling one of my friends in Harvard, he said, well, so far, when I go to my amity, not very much. He was very upset. He said, we learned a lot from you, but you must learn something. So then later I told him, yes, I did learn something. And it was precisely about all these things about empathy and all that, which we didn't think very much. Report an error in the passage at 2:07:26 Highlight the passage at 2:07:26

2:07:57 First, empathy, I don't think there's a word in Tibet, and there might be one, but not obviously. That I know. And so, but those things, you know, the idea of delaying, so really concentrating on the suffering and then having the strong compassion, that was sort of thing I discovered in the MRI machine. Report an error in the passage at 2:07:57 Highlight the passage at 2:07:57

2:08:15 So I wrote him, he said, yes, yes, no, it's very wonderful to, we learned so much working with you. So, but I think this makes sense. But we should, of course, not be stuck on that. Because then there's the solid, we should all, Whatever we do, we should not also take a solid and all that. So if you keep on just the unbearable aspect, then you fall in despair and distress. So you choose not only the compassion, but in the end realizing that it's all also a distortion of reality. Report an error in the passage at 2:08:15 Highlight the passage at 2:08:15

2:08:45 So ultimately, it's also devoid, just as happiness and euphoria is devoid of intrinsic existence. In the end, so is suffering. And it's not disregarding other suffering to say that it's like intrinsic existence because your own is the same. So all that, It's a dimension that we don't really find in daily life. This wisdom aspect and then imbuing this suffering with compassion. Report an error in the passage at 2:08:45 Highlight the passage at 2:08:45

2:09:11 So we are never stuck in the unbearable aspect. And if it's so, either you are just looping in empathy and then you need the compassion or you need more wisdom as well. So, let's stop here. Thank you. Thank you. Report an error in the passage at 2:09:11 Highlight the passage at 2:09:11

2:09:34 Sorry to have sort of taken all your sundae that you could have done a nice interesting thing. Report an error in the passage at 2:09:34 Highlight the passage at 2:09:34

2:09:45 Dearest Mathieu, thank you so so much for coming to Vajrayana Institute once again. It's been a great pleasure to have you here today sharing your wisdom and knowledge on the practice and the science of meditation and I think everyone would feel inspired to start. Working towards those first 10,000 hours. I think you need that many to be counted as having some sort of expertise. Report an error in the passage at 2:09:45 Highlight the passage at 2:09:45

2:10:14 And we've seen the many benefits of that. Also, you may like to help to contribute to some of the beautiful, smiling people we saw in Match's delightful photographs. And if you would... The website is karuṇā-shechen.org and you can go there and find out how to donate and help with the people in the Himalayas. Report an error in the passage at 2:10:14 Highlight the passage at 2:10:14

2:10:46 Thank you, Beth. Thank you, everyone. Thank you, Annalina, venerables and others. Venerables in clothes and venerables in heart. Report an error in the passage at 2:10:46 Highlight the passage at 2:10:46

2:10:56 Okay, thank you. Keep well. Report an error in the passage at 2:10:56 Highlight the passage at 2:10:56

2:11:03 And I'll just make one more quick announcement that we have two retreats, one in August and one in October with Bea Allen Wallace who is a leading meditator, a friend of Matthieu's and a wonderful person to help you with understanding more about meditation. A great opportunity to do a week's practice. Report an error in the passage at 2:11:03 Highlight the passage at 2:11:03

2:11:30 They should have been, these flyers I think were on your seat so if you're interested you can see people at registration or look online. Thank you again Matthieu. Safe journey, safe return. Report an error in the passage at 2:11:30 Highlight the passage at 2:11:30