One of the least understood forms of meditation holds great curative potential
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Non-dual meditation, also known as non-dual awareness meditation, involves becoming aware of the present moment and letting go of thoughts and beliefs that create a sense of duality or separation from the world. Here are some ways in which non-dual meditation can improve brain function:
Amygdala: Non-dual meditation has been shown to reduce activity in the amygdala, which is the part of the brain responsible for the processing of emotions and stress responses.
Prefrontal cortex: This area of the brain, associated with executive function, working memory, and decision-making, has been shown to become thicker with regular non-dual meditation practice.
Hippocampus: The hippocampus, a region important for learning and memory, has been shown to increase in size with regular non-dual meditation practice.
Default mode network: Non-dual meditation has been shown to alter activity in the default mode network, a network of brain regions that is active when the mind is at rest and inactive during focused attention.
Anterior cingulate cortex: This brain region, associated with self-awareness, empathy, and emotional regulation, has been shown to become thicker with regular non-dual meditation practice.
Insula: The insula, a region of the brain associated with body awareness and interoception, has been shown to become thicker with regular non-dual meditation practice.
So how can non-dual meditation help us?
Reduced stress and anxiety: Non-dual meditation has been shown to reduce stress and anxiety levels, which in turn can improve brain function by decreasing cortisol levels and promoting neuroplasticity.
Increased focus and attention: By promoting mindfulness and awareness, non-dual meditation can help improve focus and attention, leading to improved cognitive functioning and decision-making.
Improved neuroplasticity: Regular non-dual meditation practice has been shown to increase neuroplasticity, which is the brain’s ability to adapt and change in response to new experiences. This can lead to better brain function and improved learning and memory.
Reduced inflammation: Non-dual meditation has been shown to reduce inflammation, which has been linked to cognitive decline and neurodegenerative disorders.
Improved executive function: Non-dual meditation has been linked to improved executive function, including better decision-making, problem-solving, and working memory.
Increased grey matter density: Studies have shown that regular non-dual meditation practice can lead to an increase in grey matter density in the brain, which is associated with better cognitive function and a reduction in age-related cognitive decline.
Overall, non-dual meditation has the potential to improve brain function significantly. By reducing stress and promoting mindfulness, this form of meditation can improve focus and attention, neuroplasticity, executive function and more, leading to better cognitive and mental health.
The problem in talking about the concept of nonduality is that it is everywhere, all the time, but it is rarely recognised or understood.
Nonduality, the foundational principle of Buddhist meditation methods
(Follow this link if you are looking for the scientific explanation of nonduality, meditation and agenda for change.)
Where to begin? Where to begin when there is no beginning? To merely approach the concept of nonduality, several volumes of definitions, meanings and precedents could be used to establish the common ground required for a meaningful introduction. Consider that in traditional training systems, an ‘introduction’ to nonduality can comprise a decade or more of study and meditation. Even then an intellectual understanding might not be achieved, and a genuine experiential appreciation is even less likely. But despite the challenges, I’m going to attempt to outline a basic framework illustrating the inseparability of nonduality and Buddhist meditation.
From the Western academic standpoint, there are several ways of approaching nonduality, including the use of art, contemplative science, neuroscience, philosophy, psychology, semiotics and more.1 However, as this is a discussion of duality and nonduality in contemplative science, I can try a short-cut and align these thoughts to theoretical frameworks from traditional meditation systems. Crucially these established understandings have stable ontologies with reliable supporting and supportive epistemologies. Such theoretical frameworks can be found throughout traditional meditation schools, but are explicitly taught in nondual approaches such as Dzogchen and Mahamudra.2 I disagree with Capra’s generalisations about the shared world view of Eastern mystical traditions.3 But I take his point that there are fundamental conflicts between positivist and mystical understandings of mind and matter. This is not to give the first or last word on nonduality to any tradition, school or sect. Put simply, the tension between duality and nonduality is just an elegant way of describing the conscious experience of humans. However, some mystical traditions have established literary and oral traditions explaining the nature of explicit nonduality and the methods that may be used to establish nondual awareness (NDA).
As most forms of meditation shape the cognitive processes underpinning conscious experience, they can be considered as tools able to influence our concepts of duality-nonduality. However, a point of clarification is required, everything we think, say or do also exerts a force upon our lived experience. The difference between meditation and everyday experience is that meditation can be designed to systematically augment our access to NDA. So when we talk about meditation in a traditional context, nonduality is generally (intrinsically and extrinsically) part of the process and method being used. It is also important to stress that Buddhist meditation is a broad church (several different churches), some meditation approaches may not articulate any position about dualistic concepts. For example, Bhikkhu Bodhi has stated that the Buddhist scriptures reject the pursuit of dual or nondual states.2 The motivation of practitioners is also a critical factor in this discussion, people may meditate for many years without ever encountering the path to NDA. Conversely, several people have reported ‘accidental’ insight into nonduality without the use of any of the methods known to mediate conscious experience. Reassuringly, traditional texts from established meditation schools set out the foundational processes leading to NDA, which are congruent with (some) scientific understandings of cognitive training.
Contemplative science (the scientific study of meditation and mindfulness built up over the last half-century) is yet to create authoritative understandings of the relationship between dual-nondual consciousness and meditation. One of the limiting factors in the scientific study of traditional forms of meditation is the very existence of dual and nondual awareness. The assumptions of positivism are that both the scientist and the scientific method are objective, assertions that have been demonstrated to be dualistic and sometimes unreliable. Therefore, NDA challenges the ontologies of many approaches trying to understand how traditional mediation mediates consciousness.
So given the preamble, how to explain nonduality to a person neurologically committed to a dualistic view of the world? For this, we can return to preliminary discourses of how does the mind watch itself? The typical cognitive response to this question is that the executive function (EF) holds this task (of self-monitoring). But in reality, we know (at the level of psychology and personal experience), the EF is both participant and observer of the drama of our lives. This supports the view that humans flit between the dual and nondual states without necessarily being aware or having any choice in the matter. This takes us back to the drawing board because it is clear we often see the world in both dual and nondual frames according to a range of causes and conditions. NDA isn’t an abandonment of duality. Instead, it offers an experience-based understanding of the full scope of our conscious engagement with the world.
Preliminary work by scientists like Josipovic and scholars such as Dunne has indicated that meditation methods establish in nonduality possess a qualitatively different nature when compared to other practices. But NDA is not restricted to nondual practices, it is relevant to all forms of Buddhist meditation (to a greater or lesser extent). This is the main point, we have a number of neural networks that drive our experience of life. Humans privilege parts of these networks over others, leading to a false certainty or reliance on those privileged domains. Over time these positions become dominant in terms of brain functions and structures. This is why so many of us are oblivious to the limitations of duality, we lack the cognitive software or neurological hardware to access it.
I have yet to see evidence that the timeless negotiation between dual and nondual consciousness has been recorded scientifically, let alone understood. This shouldn’t be seen as a criticism of contemplative science or cognitive psychology. A training in NDA is typically a work of years, and few people ever fully complete this journey. The full potential offered to humanity by nondual forms of meditation is dependent on grasping the nature of highly elusive mental states, considered to be the ‘result’ of meditation practices. The notion that the benefits of meditation can be found in the method alone reflects a dualistic understanding of mystical approaches.
The good news for both meditation scientists and secular practitioners is that a meaningful understanding of experience-based NDA is not essential for the research and practice of meditation methods. That regular meditation can alter brain function and structure is now widely accepted. In some cases, a pressing clinical need may lead to the practice of meditation as symptom focussed brain training, in the way that we could use Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). But this has little relationship with traditional and transcendent forms of meditation. A foundational limitation in the scientific study of meditation is also the absence of an appreciation of explicit and implicit nondual mental processes.
If you’re still wondering what duality and nonduality are, you’re not alone. It’s a tricky subject to work with, many experienced meditators are aware of the concepts but still fail to engage consciously with them. For a basic introduction into nondual concepts, you might find the NDA podcast helpful, download it here.
Notes
1. Loy, David. Nonduality: A study in comparative philosophy. Prometheus Books, 2012.
2. Josipovic, Zoran. “Neural correlates of nondual awareness in meditation.” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1307, no. 1 (2014): 9-18.
3. It is a complex task to define precisely which Eastern mystical traditions are nondual and which are not. The very proposition is a binary concept that makes no real sense from the nondual perspective. Perhaps at a later point I will attempt to set out distinctions between relative and absolute nonduality and how these can be further divided into explicit and implicit forms (realistically this is a book project rather than a blog post). Capra, Fritjof. “Modern physics and eastern mysticism.” Journal of Transpersonal Psychology 8, no. 1 (1976).
4. With all respect to the Bhikkhu, the abandonment of the pursuit of relative conscious states such as dual or nondual appears close to the integration which is one goal of the explicitly nondual traditions. Bodhi, Bhikkhu. “Dhamma and non-duality.” Access to Insight (2011).
Mirror neurons may have significant implications for meditators and spiritual practitioners.
Macaque monkeys were used for the first mirror neuron experiments
Authors: Di Pellegrino, G., Fadiga, L., Fogassi, L., Gallese, V., & Rizzolatti, G.
Year: 1992
Title: Understanding motor events: a neurophysiological study
Summary: Research emitting from the University of Parma in the 1990s changed cognitive science forever. This was the place where the mirror neuron was identified. At first sight it might not appear to have a direct relevance with meditation, but mirror neurons demonstrate a characteristic of the human brain central to understanding how we interconnect with each other. Under certain conditions we are directly affected by what we see other people do. This phenomenon is not restricted to humans.
If we see others undertaking a behavior that reflects something we have done, it will fire our mirror neurons as if we were doing it. This effect is not linked to species it is about how closely observable behaviors correspond our own motor repertoire.
Stephen Gene Morris
In the original experiment a macaque monkey demonstrated mirror neuron activity when a human experimenter undertook tasks that it had been trained to do. The implications for meditators include:
Firstly it is a weakening to self-other duality, humans and animals can, under relatively common conditions share action potentials in mirror neurons.
Secondly there is a clear relationship between what we see and how this affects our brain. It seems plausible that if we see kind acts that we ourselves have done in the past our mirror neurons will fire as if we were administering the kindness. The same would apply for unkind acts.
I have written a paper on this experiment which can be made available on request. The original literature (linked below) is very readable but it is the first in a series of the Parma Mirror Neuron Experiments.
Dualism is a crucial issue in the understanding and practice of meditation.
Author: Josipovic, Z.
Year: 2014
Title: Neural correlates of nondual awareness in meditation
Summary: Many practitioners of nondual meditation have a theoretical and experiential understanding of nondual awareness (NDA). NDA has been described simply as an appreciation of the limitations of subject-object dichotomies. Perception of phenomena as dualistic and non dualistic permeates every aspect of our lives, but NDA is the relative state when we become aware of our habitual fluctuation between dual and nondual views. Neurologically speaking NDA increasingly appears to be fundamentally different from dualistic thought and indeed dualistic meditation. In terms of methodologies, meditation systems can be divided many different ways. But one of the most important and least researched categorisations is between the dual and nondual approaches. Josipovic offers an insight into the nondual approach and explains why and how it is different from other forms of meditation.
Supported both by contemporary experimental evidence and traditional explanations (to some extent). Josipovic presents a study exploring a neuroscience basis for NDA through the relational activity in intrinsic and extrinsic networks during three different forms of meditation (NDA, focussed attention and fixation). Results indicate a reduction during nondual meditation of the negative correlation between the intrinsic and extrinsic networks when compared to both fixation and focussed attention. It should be noted that there are neuroscience and cognitive studies that both support and contradict Josipovic’s hypothesis. However only when reviewed alongside research demonstrating the limitations of intrinsic network suppression can the full potential of his insight be appreciated.
Editor’s Note: The scientific exploration of meditation in all its forms has been hampered by a (much reported) failure to establish authoritative theoretical frameworks. Josipovic has provided an approach which appears to successfully encompass the traditional explanations of NDA and can support phenomenological accounts integrated within a neuroscientific context.
Meditators know the most about meditation, if science ignores them they miss a trick.
(The research is now complete, thanks to all who participated)
Do you meditate or practice mindfulness?
I am currently undertaking an academic survey into meditation and wellbeing. I would like to ask meditators over the age of 18 to complete a short anonymous questionnaire about their practice (it should take around ten minutes). The research has been ethically approved and conforms to all the usual academic norms.
This important research seeks to capture the meditation and mindfulness experience of practitioners of different levels of experience and backgrounds. Based on meditators self reported insights, this projects follows recent signposts in contemplative science putting greater emphasis on the experiential nature of mindfulness and meditation.
Can mindfulness be regarded as a Buddhist practice?
Title: Is mindfulness Buddhist? (and why it matters)
Author: Robert H. Sharf
Year: 2015
Summary: Modern mindfulness meditation is often associated with the state of ‘bare attention’, paying attention in the moment, non judgementally but deliberately. This particular state is not without established precedent in different schools of Buddhism and Robert H. Sharf outlines examples from Burmese reformed Buddhism, the Chinese Chan and Tibetan Dzogchen traditions. This paper also highlights issues associated with the theoretical framework for mindfulness in Buddhism and the relationship between the transformative potential of meditation and the wider context within which meditation is undertaken.
Perspective: Religious studies, psychiatry, health psychology
dings of the relationship between dual-nondual consciousness and meditation. One of the limiting factors in the scientific study of traditional forms of meditation is the very existence of dual and nondual awareness. The assumptions of positivism are that both the scientist and the scientific method are objective, assertions that have been demonstrated to be dualistic and sometimes unreliable. Therefore, NDA challenges the ontologies of many approaches trying to understand how traditional mediation mediates consciousness.
The Science of Meditation and Mindfulness 