Compassion As an Intervention to Attune to Universal Suffering of Self and Others in Conflicts: A Translational Framework.
S Shaun Ho, Yoshio Nakamura, James E. Swain
Frontiers in Psychology 2020 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.603385 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Intervention | compassion meditation |
| Topics | Buddhism Meditation |
| Keywords | Bayesian Compassion karuna Conflicts Free energy principle Lojong Neuroimaging |
| Citations | 15 |
| Key points | Proposes that compassion meditation can strengthen brain regions conducive to suspending prior beliefs and enhancing attunement to others, countering ego-preserving bias. |
Abstract
As interpersonal, racial, social, and international conflicts intensify in the world, it is important to safeguard the mental health of individuals affected by them. According to a Buddhist notion "if you want others to be happy, practice compassion; if you want to be happy, practice compassion," compassion practice is an intervention to cultivate conflict-proof well-being. Here, compassion practice refers to a form of concentrated meditation wherein a practitioner attunes to friend, enemy, and someone in between, thinking, "I'm going to help them (equally)." The compassion meditation is based on Buddhist philosophy that mental suffering is rooted in conceptual thoughts that give rise to generic mental images of self and others and subsequent biases to preserve one's egoism, blocking the ultimate nature of mind. To contextualize compassion meditation scientifically, we adopted a Bayesian active inference framework to incorporate relevant Buddhist concepts, including mind (buddhi), compassion (karuna), aggregates (skandhas), suffering (duhkha), reification (samaropa), conceptual thoughts (vikalpa), and superimposition (prapañca). In this framework, a person is considered a Bayesian Engine that actively constructs phenomena based on the aggregates of forms, sensations, discriminations, actions, and consciousness. When the person embodies rigid beliefs about self and others' identities (identity-grasping beliefs) and the resulting ego-preserving bias, the person's Bayesian Engine malfunctions, failing to use prediction errors to update prior beliefs. To counter this problem, after recognizing the causes of sufferings, a practitioner of the compassion meditation aims to attune to all others equally, friends and enemies alike, suspend identity-based conceptual thoughts, and eventually let go of any identity-grasping belief and ego-preserving bias that obscure reality. We present a brain model for the Bayesian Engine of three components: (a) Relation-Modeling, (b) Reality-Checking, and (c) Conflict-Alarming, which are subserved by (a) the Default-Mode Network (DMN), (b) Frontoparietal Network (FPN) and Ventral Attention Network (VAN), and (c) Salience Network (SN), respectively. Upon perceiving conflicts, the strengthening or weakening of ego-preserving bias will critically depend on whether the SN up-regulates the DMN or FPN/VAN, respectively. We propose that compassion meditation can strengthen brain regions that are conducive for suspending prior beliefs and enhancing the attunements to the counterparts in conflicts.
Comparable studies
Other theoretical and historical papers on buddhism, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mental balance and well-being: Building bridges between Buddhism and Western psychology. | 2006 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Buddhist Modernism and the Rhetoric of Meditative Experience | 1995 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Buddhist and Psychological Perspectives on Emotions and Well-Being | 2005 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Too Early to Tell: The Potential Impact and Challenges—Ethical and Otherwise—Inherent in the Mainstreaming of Dharma in an Increasingly Dystopian World | 2017 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| From self to nonself: The Nonself Theory | 2016 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
Citations in the library
Cited by 2
Cites 21
- Open hearts build lives: Positive emotions, induced through loving-kindness meditation, build consequential personal resources. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology October 27, 2008
- The salience network is responsible for switching between the default mode network and the central executive network: Replication from DCM Neuroimage May 24, 2014
- Loving-kindness meditation increases social connectedness. Emotion October 1, 2008
- The wandering brain: Meta-analysis of functional neuroimaging studies of mind-wandering and related spontaneous thought processes Neuroimage February 25, 2015
- The default-mode, ego-functions and free-energy: a neurobiological account of Freudian ideas Brain February 28, 2010
and 16 more in the library