(This is Part 4 of a series. Go back to Part 3.)
Recent research at the University of Wisconsin is very interesting. They're measuring brain states. In doing so, they're using an unusual EEG machine.
The usual EEG machine has six sensors on the scalp. Advanced machines use 32 sensors. But the EKG machine used at these experiments had hundreds of sensors.
When analyzed by very sophisticated software, researchers could for the first time construct an electrical 3-D image of the brain while it was funtioning. And what they found was remarkable.
What's emerging is that the real pleasure center of the brain is not near the brain stem, as was previously thought, but in a certain area of the left pre-frontal cortex. When subjects are feeling happy, serene, peaceful, joyful, etc. this left pre-frontal area is alive with activity.
Conversely, on the right side of the pre-frontal area is an area which is very active when negative feelings are experienced—sadness, anger, anxiety, worry, etc.
It turns out that every person has a customary ratio of the activity in the left pre-frontal area versus the activity in the right pre-frontal area. This ratio is our "set point," our habitual state of happiness or unhappiness.
Various things can increase the activity of the left (happiness) area and lower the activity of the right (unhappiness) area and thus increase the well-being ratio: Recalling happy memories, watching heartwarming films, receiving delightful news, engaging in pleasurable activities and so on all increase this ratio.
But guess what, according to experiments, causes the most radical and profound shift towards happiness in the brain?
Compassion.
Radical compassion, though. Not just compassion for our friends or loved ones, but compassion for all beings.
It turns out that cultivating the feeling of compassion for all beings—whether friends or enemies, relatives or strangers, leaving no-one and nothing out—creates the greatest pleasure in the brain.
This is old news to Buddhists. The Buddha, 2500 years ago, stressed the cultivation of compassion in order to avoid what in modern terms we might call a "dry" enlightenment.
The Buddha also said that the cultivation of compassion for all beings brought additional benefits such as being loved by people, having a serene mind and sleeping peacefully.
The Dalai Lama said it well: "A person doing a meditation on compassion for all beings," he said, "is the immediate beneficiary."
As usual, we see that the universe mirrors perfectly what we are putting out into the universe. Are we thinking thoughts such as manipulation, resentment or regret towards the external world? Then our internal state will mirror that.
But if we are cultivating compassion towards others, serene happiness is more and more reflected internally by the cosmic mirror.
All beings want to be happy and want to avoid suffering. And a measure of suffering is the fate of every being; this is part of the fabric of existence.
To feel the suffering of all the beings in the universe and consciously send love out to them is to drastically transform our own experience of existence. To be concerned for the well-being of others creates the highest state of well-being in ourselves.
Thus again we see the poetry of existence, the mystery that returns back to us whatever we radiate, the divine mirror that reflects back to us whatever we send out.
It was no accident, then, that Jesus too stressed love and compassion—loving your enemy, loving your neighbor, being merciful, being tolerant, loving God, treating others as you would wish to be treated. He knew that the divine melody is heard most by those who wish it for others.
(For further information on the cultivation of compassion, please see the article on this website about tonglen.)
—jim sloman, 11.1.03 for 5.11.05
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