My stepmother often asks me why I want to live on 'The Mountain', meaning Diamond Mountain. I live here full-time in a yurt with a small amount of solar power for a light and a small fan. I use the center's laundry and bathroom facilities and shared kitchen. I have been living here since January 2008. I've been attending studies here since 2003. I've studied Buddhism formally since 1995.
There are other folks living full-time at other Buddhist centers; some are paid and some are volunteers. I am a volunteer. I have no regular income, but I also have few financial needs. My children are grown and live on their own.
So why live here? Why now? And why three year retreat?
My family is rather anti-religious; they are more politically and scientifically inclined. Their question is valid and I hope this begins to explain why I would find this path as valid as I feel they find their paths.
Over the last 30 years or so, neuroscientific studies in brain-mapping have revealed that different areas of the brain become active depending on the types of processes it is accomplishing. The “external network” of the brain, the area associated with apprehending and responding to the external world, and the “default network”, the area that is active during self-reflection and self-awareness, have a push-pull relationship in most people. When we listen to someone talk about their day, the external network is activated. When our thoughts shift even briefly to wondering what we, ourselves, will eat for lunch, the default network becomes active. The thought activity in these networks have been mapped and measured in many neuroscientific studies using high level MRI scans. (New York University; Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel; Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Mo.)
When Buddhist monks skilled in a particular type of non-dual meditation were studied, scientists found the push-pull activity expected in a normal brain was suspended. Instead, they found a balance, an ability to be aware of introspection and the external world at the same time. Activity was present in both networks simultaneously.
The significance to these tests is somewhat unknown except, at least, for their relationship to studies of patients experiencing depression, autism, and Alzheimer's disease, who also show suspended push-pull relationships between their thoughts relating to their inner and outer world. In these patients, their default network, their inner world, does not “turn off” when apprehending and thinking about external stimuli. And they're not happy. And we don't know how to help them.
But these monks, who are happy, who are content, who aren't mentally ill, share similar brain activity, in their case consciously-trained brain activity.
In my family, I have seen Alzheimer's, clinical chronic depression, and Asperger's Syndrome, a high functioning form of autism. I can't say I've become any sort of expert at non-dual single pointed meditation, but I have applied myself to the practice of meditation. Because Buddhism is defined, for the most part, as a religion, it has been difficult to express to my family why this is a valid path compared to activism or career. But now, with these scientific findings available to anyone on the web, maybe I can justify, at least a little bit, that learning something about my own mind through meditation just might help someone in the future, someone losing their memories, someone with a bottle of pills in their hand and hopelessness in their heart, someone unable to relate to those who love them.
We all live in our own little world. What these studies suggest to me is that some folks are trapped in that world as their minds move uncontrollably within both inner and outer, losing the boundaries that make it a loving and safe world for them. If meditators' minds can create the same circumstances in the brain, and negotiate a peaceful, happy state of mind free of this boundary confusion, then maybe what we're doing here can have a measurable impact on our world, not just making us better people, not just enabling us as individuals to reach the spiritual goals and realizations we do hope to reach here, but to come out of this retreat as trained healers of the mind, offering ourselves as a bridge to the mental health this country so wishes to regain.
As a people, we are stressed, we are unhappy, we are exhausted from running after things that don't make us happy and our brains are becoming tired of the chase. If there's a chance that what we do here can offer science more trained meditators to study, those of us with the genetics for Alzheimers and autism or a proclivity towards depression, then it’s worth a try. Disease of the mind may not be incurable if it may be linked to how and where thoughts are being processed. Pills, behavior therapies, and surgeries certainly aren't fixing those problems. And millions of dollars a year are invested in those failed methods. What if how we think from day-to-day, how we use that amazing brain of ours, is a key?
It's good question - why do this thing at Diamond Mountain? These studies offer but one validation to what we could accomplish here. It's not the only reason for taking up the study and practice of deep meditation in the middle of nowhere, but for my family at least, maybe it points to a measurable goal they can accept and respect.
