I could follow the wishes of my heart without doing wrong

Confucious said,
"At fifteen, I aspired to learning.
At thirty, I established my stand.
At forthy, I had not delusions.
At fifty, I knew my destiny.
At sixty, I knew truth in all I heard.
At seventy, I could follow the wishes of my heart without doing wrong.
(the Analects of Confucius, Chapter2, Verse 4)
Link to Confucious.org

What attracts my attention in terms of meditation is the last part, "I could follow the wishes of my heart without doing wrong." This is the exact description of ultimate emotion regulation that can be achieved by mindfulness meditation.

As a brain imaging study revealed that one of main benefits of mindfulness meditation is emotion regulation. Practicing mindfulness meditation may enhance the capacity to regulate people's emotion. (How and what is mindfulness meditation good?)

Our old brain just follows one principle: avoid and approach. There is no right or wrong in this principle. It is our new brain that decides which is wrong or good. There are two ways the new brain control the old brain: suppression and regulation.

Emotion suppresion is very different from emotion regulation. Suppresion is the situation when the wishes of one's heart are contradictory to one's moral value or other social situations. It is after the old brain activates desires for the objects, when the new brain (dorsal part of medial prefrontal cortex) suppresses the desire.

Regulation is the situation when the wishes of one's heart are consistent with one's moral values or other social situations. It is before the old brain activates desires for the objects when the new brain (ventral part of medial prefrontal cortex) regulates the desire.

As you may guess, emotion regulation is much more comfortable and mentally beneficial than emotion suppression.

Confucious said the status can be achieved at the age of seventy. The age of seventy is a simbolic description such that being seventy does not guarantee the capacity of emotional reguation. It can be achieved from mental training such as mindfulness meditation.

Confucius (551 BCE – 479 BCE) was an esteemed Chinese thinker and social philosopher. The quote above is one of his teachings in the Analects of Confucius (論語), a collection of "brief aphoristic fragments", which was compiled many years after his death. (wiki)

Change your Mind Change your Brain: The Inner Conditions for Authentic Happiness by Matthieu Ricard

Link to webpage

Toward the First Revolution in the Mind Sciences

This is one of lecture series of google techtalk. Allan Wallace delivered similar speech at the Northwestern University. Ken Paller of the Northwestern University Cognitive science program moderated the dialog between Allan Wallace and renowned philosopher John Searle. Wallace presented his view first, Searle did second, and both discussed the issues on the scientific study of the mind. (direct link to the clip. ram file. player can be obtained here)

In this presentation, Wallace suggests that introspection can be a first revolution of scientific study of the mind. Introspection is a kind of "telescope or microscope" in observing the mind. It was Buddha who refined the introspection and developed it to observe the mind, like Galileo refined the telescope and used it to make precise observations of stars.

Link to the webpage
Link to the video materials of the Allan's website.



Following is the part of his presentation.

* Samadhi: the telescope of the mind

Revolutionary Indian truth-seekers (c.3,000 years ago) learned to develop stable, vivid attention - samadhi

The Buddha was the "Indian Galileo" for innovatively using this "telescope for the mind" to rigorously explore a broad range of ordinary and extraordinary states of consciousness with refined mental perception.

* The framework of Buddhist practice

Ethics: social and environmental flourishing
Mental balance (samadhi): psychological flourishing
Contemplative insight: spiritual flourishing


* Buddhist Skepticism

Buddha: "Do not be led by reports, or tradition, or hearsay. Be not led by the authority of religious texts, nor by mere logic or inference, nor by considering appearances, nor by the delight in speculative opinions, nor by seeming possibilities,nor by the idea: 'this is our teacher.' But ... when you know for yourselves that certain things are unwholesome, destructive, and detrimental, then reject them... And when you know for yourselves that certain things are wholesome and good, then accept them and follow them.


* A potential revolution in the Minds Sciences

Integrate rigorous first-person and third-person methodologies in collaboration between cognitive scientists and contemplatives with exceptional mental skills and insights resulting from rigorous, sustained, mental training in observing and experimenting with states of consciousness.

Mindfulness Stress Reduction And Healing by Kabat-Zinn

This is a lecture held at Google on March 8, 2007. Kabat-Zinn is the person who has established secular usage of "holy mental technique," the mindfulness mediation. [link: to the Lecture page]

How and what is mindfulness meditation good ?

One of main benefits of mindfulness meditation is emotion regulation. A brain imaging study revealed that mindfulness meditation may enhance the capacity to regulate people's emotion.

Here is the abstract of the study:

Objective: Mindfulness is a process whereby one is aware and receptive to present moment experiences. Although mindfulness enhancing interventions reduce pathological mental and physical health symptoms across a wide variety of conditions and diseases, the mechanisms underlying these effects remain unknown. Converging evidence from the mindfulness and neuroscience literature suggests that labeling affect may be one mechanism for these effects.

Methods: Participants (n
27) indicated trait levels of mindfulness and then completed an affect labeling task while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging. The labeling task consisted of matching facial expressions to appropriate affect words (affect labeling) or to gender-appropriate names (gender labeling control task).

Results: After controlling for multiple individual difference measures, dispositional mindfulness was associated with greater widespread prefrontal cortical activation, and reduced bilateral amygdala activity during affect labeling, compared with the gender labeling control task. Further, strong negative associations were found between areas of prefrontal cortex and right amygdala responses in participants high in mindfulness but not in participants low in mindfulness.

Conclusions: The present findings with a dispositional measure of mindfulness suggest one potential neurocognitive mechanism for understanding how mindfulness meditation interventions reduce negative affect and improve health outcomes, showing that mindfulness is associated with enhanced prefrontal cortical regulation of affect through labeling of negative affective stimuli.

Key words: fMRI, mindfulness, emotion regulation, neuroscience, meditation, negative affect.

The skillful use of labeling during satipatthana [mindful] contemplation can help strengthen clear recognition and understanding. At the same time, labeling introduces a healthy degree of inner detachment, since the act of apostrophizing one’s moods and emotions diminishes one’s identification with them.
Analayo, from Satipatthana

And, here are their conclusion:

The present findings are part of the first efforts in understanding the neurocognitive underpinnings of mindfulness and identifying the neural pathways that link mindfulness with improved psychological and physical well-being. These findings
connect historical accounts of the Buddha’s first teachings mindfulness over two millennia ago with contemporary findings in affective and cognitive neuroscience suggesting that mindfulness may reduce negative affect and promote greater physical health, in part, through labeling one’s feelings.

Link to the research PDF paper: Creswell, J. D., Way, B. M., Eisenberger, N. I., & Lieberman, M. D. (2007). Neural correlates of dispositional mindfulness during affect labeling. Psychosomatic Medicine, 69, 560-565.

Link to the news: UCLA Psychology Study finds Resonance with Buddhist Teachings