1. The First Meeting: Dharamshala, 1992

The very first time I met His Holiness the Dalai Lama was in 1992. I was with three other scientists and we schlepped about 5,000 pounds of equipment with us to Dharamshala, India, to begin this project — to start investigating the brains of yogis who have been meditating for the good part of their adult life in caves and huts on Bhagsu Mountain, surrounding the hills of Dharamshala.

These caves and huts are not accessible by any motorized vehicle. We had a whole series of sherpas helping us schlep this equipment. Go back to 1992: laptops were not quite as light as they are now, video cameras were not as small as they are now, batteries were not as long-lasting as they are now. So we had a generator with us. It was insane. We had this generator going outside a cave to power the equipment.

To make a long story short, we were able to collect absolutely no data. Zero. Because these were yogis who had never seen a computer before. They had no contact with Western science before. We made a vow that we weren't going to, in any way, force or "twist their arms," so to speak, into cooperating with research. And they told us, "We'd be happy to teach you about meditation. Please sit for the next few years and we'll be happy to..."

That was our beginning. Toward the end of this three-week visit — which was the initial visit in 1992 — His Holiness the Dalai Lama asked us to give a talk to the monks at the Namgyal Monastery. The Namgyal Monastery is the monastery connected to his residence. This data collection visit was a total bust. We wanted to use the equipment for something, so we decided, instead of giving a traditional academic lecture, we would demonstrate how we can record brain activity and show the monks how we do it. We walk into this hall and there were 200 monks dutifully sitting on the floor.

In those days, the equipment was much more clunky, and we put electrodes on the head of one of the scientists — and the person we put electrodes on was, some of you may know who this is, Francisco Varela, who was one of the scientists accompanying us on this visit. It took us about 45 minutes to put the electrodes on Francisco. Finally, we had the electrodes on and the brain oscillations were displaying beautifully on the computer, and we sort of parted ways so that everyone — all the monastics — could see what was going on.

And 200 monks in unison just burst out laughing. We thought that they were laughing because Francisco looked kind of funny with the electrode cap on, but actually that's not what they were laughing about. They were laughing about something far more serious. They were laughing because we were talking about studying compassion and we were putting electrodes on the head and not on the heart. That was a big lesson. Really big.

Talk about the Bodhisattva brain — we really should be talking about the Bodhisattva heart.

2. Born to Flourish

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This is just an inspirational picture. This photograph was taken in 2001, at the really early days of this work, during one of His Holiness' many visits to Madison. We were showing him how we can interrogate the structure and function of the human brain using MRI. This was the early days of brain imaging, 2001. It was super cool because we were able to show His Holiness how pure mental activity actually can be associated with systematic changes in the brain.

I had a student of mine who was lying in the scanner for several hours waiting for us to finally arrive. We asked him to do a task that is one of these really simple kinds of things, which always shows very reliable findings. We had him move his fingers on one hand so we could see the contralateral motor cortex light up and show activation. Then move his left hand. And we see the right hemisphere activated. He did that and we did see that. Then His Holiness said, "Can I talk to him?" His Holiness is such an amazing experimenter, and has such curiosity. He said to David, who was lying in the scanner, "Can you please imagine your right hand moving? But don't move it. Just imagine it."

This was the very early days of looking at the effects of mental imagery on the brain. We were able to see patterns of activity that were similar to — not completely identical with, but quite similar to — the actual action. This was something that really impressed His Holiness, because this was pure mental activity that was associated with these changes in the brain.

I said that we were born to flourish — that we are born to be kind. This is not just a platitude. There is actually hard-nosed evidence to suggest that when we come into the world as young beings, we show a proclivity for kindness. And that's not a small statistical proclivity. It's not like 55% of infants that you test show this and 45% do not. A 100% of infants in these studies show what I'm about to demonstrate.

As Infants Tell Us

What I'm going to show you is a video clip that is shown to infants between the ages of 6 and 12 months.

[Video clips shown]

Which of these creatures do you think 6-month-old babies prefer? A hundred percent of them prefer the first. A hundred percent. This is a whopping phenomenon. This is not an isolated study. This is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences — a super prestigious journal. This is really robust and there are many other studies that show something very similar. It suggests that we come into the world with this proclivity to cooperate, to be kind.

So when we engage in practices to cultivate kindness and to cultivate compassion, we are not creating something de novo — but rather, we are recognizing the true nature of our hearts and minds. That's what we're doing. We're nourishing those qualities. But we're not creating them out of nothing. We are simply cultivating what we come into the world with.

And in many ways we think of it very similarly to the way scientists think about language. We all come into the world with a propensity for language, but in order for that propensity to be expressed, we need to be raised in a normal linguistic community. And if we don't — and there have been case studies of feral children who are raised in the wild — they don't develop normal language. And it's likely that the same is true for these qualities like kindness and compassion.

3. It's Easier Than You Think

The second theme I want to touch upon is that it's easier than you think. Now, I meditate. I try to meditate a lot. I put in my time. I sit for at least 45 minutes every day, often longer. I do retreat. I know that there are many others in the room who are much longer-term meditators than I am. However, the data show that there are benefits that you can get from practicing for five minutes a day if you do it consistently. That's all it takes to get these circuits in the mind and the brain and the heart going. In part, it's because this is who we are — we are born to flourish, and it's not that hard.

For example, this is a practice that we use with school teachers who've never heard of meditation. We have them reflect on their purpose in becoming a teacher. We have them do that for one minute before they start their day, and then we sprinkle it through the day — and it turns out, with a total of five minutes across the day, if you do that for 28 days, there are huge benefits that are measurable. There are biological changes that we can see with just that minimal amount of practice. So the idea that someone can't meditate — who says they can't meditate? We can introduce this in a very gentle way that is really tractable.

We've now published many studies showing that on average five minutes a day, done for 28 days, produces robust benefit in a variety of different kinds of populations, including those who are not drawn to this in the first place. We've worked with sectors like educators, healthcare providers, first responders, police and fire. They all are showing these demonstrable benefits with just this really minimal dose of practice.

4. Flourishing Is Infectious

The third point I wanted to make is that flourishing is infectious. Anyone who's been around the Dalai Lama would report that, certainly. I'll share another story with you about the infectious nature of flourishing.

The Dalai Lama at NIH

I'm a scientist who's received, over the course of my career, a lot of money from the National Institutes of Health. It was my aspiration to bring the Dalai Lama to NIH. When I first proposed this, they thought I was just off the wall and out of my mind. They said, "A religious figure coming to NIH? Impossible."

And then Francis Collins — who was the former director of NIH — is an evangelical Christian, a beautiful man, and something you don't see very often: he's actually a humble molecular biologist. Very few molecular biologists have much humility. I had the opportunity to talk to Francis about this, and he asked me for a lot of material, and finally he said yes.

I was there for this auspicious occasion, and beforehand Francis called me and asked, "He's going to be on campus for an hour before he gives his talk. What labs do you think he would be interested in visiting?" This was around 2014 or 2015. I said, "He's been to so many labs already. He's seen scanners." I think that what he'd be most interested in — there's a hospital on the NIH campus where very sick patients are being treated with experimental approaches — I thought he'd be really interested in meeting the patients. Francis thought that was crazy, but he finally relented and said, "Okay, we'll start with a hospital visit and then we'll go to a lab."

So that was the plan. They brought the patients to the doorway of their rooms and we walked down a corridor — there was an entourage of around 15 people, including two Nobel Laureates. And His Holiness just went up to each person. I would say about half the patients knew who His Holiness was, and half had no idea who this monk was.

His Holiness went up to each person. He held them and he asked, "How are you?" It was a hallway that if you walked at a normal pace may take about a minute and a half to go down — and it took about 45 minutes for His Holiness to walk down. By the end of this walk, everybody was crying. All of the people in this entourage, these Nobel Laureates, were just touched by this compassion in action, just completely transformed.

The Louisville Schools Project

So let me give you a way that we have tried to test this in research, in a very applied way, that we are super excited about. We just finished a large project in Louisville, Kentucky, in the Jefferson County Public School District — the major public school district in Louisville. It's complicated. It's fraught with all kinds of problems. There were a lot of different reasons why Louisville was chosen, and the causes and conditions came together. The mayor at that time was a guy named Greg Fisher, who was a real visionary and not a career politician. The superintendent of the public school system, a guy named Marty Polio, was a real visionary too. So there were a lot of things that were aligned.

We went into the entire school system and we offered, freely — this was grant-supported — a program to cultivate wellbeing for the teachers and for the staff. We included everyone: bus drivers, cafeteria workers, anyone who worked for the Jefferson County Public School system. But it was a randomized control trial, so it was super rigorous. We randomized people to a group where they received five minutes a day of this wellbeing training and we compared it to a control group.

The Four Pillars of Wellbeing

The wellbeing training consists of training in these four pillars of wellbeing that we have written a lot about, and that are deeply drawn from contemplative traditions — particularly the Buddhist tradition, but also other contemplative traditions — and also modern science. What are these four pillars?

The first is awareness — and it would include qualities like mindfulness.

The second pillar is connection — and connection would include appreciation, gratitude, kindness, compassion.

The third pillar is insight. In the Buddhist tradition this would be wisdom, but it's really insight into the narrative that we all carry around in our minds about ourselves. What is really important for wellbeing is not so much changing the narrative, but changing our relationship to this narrative.

Finally, the last pillar is purpose. With purpose, it's not so much about finding something more purposeful to do with your life, but how can you find meaning and purpose in even the most pedestrian activities of your life. Can washing the dishes be really beautifully connected to your sense of purpose? Can taking out the garbage be deeply connected to your sense of purpose? Of course it could be — it just requires a little bit of reframing.

That's what these folks were doing. And it turns out that it dramatically improves their wellbeing. It decreases their depression and anxiety.

But here's the real kicker. We had the opportunity to look at the student performance for the students who are taught by teachers randomly assigned to the wellbeing training, and we compared them to students taught by teachers randomly assigned to the control group. This was a very rigorous comparison. The students had no idea that any research was going on — they were just doing their standardized tests.

We find that standardized math and language scores are significantly and robustly higher in the students who are taught by teachers who are more aware, who are more connected, who had more insight, and who express more purpose — that is, teachers who are showing up with higher levels of wellbeing. We're super excited about this.

5. Flourishing at the Edge of Death — Tukdam

And finally, in the last minute or so, I want to share one last thing. A number of years ago, the Dalai Lama asked me to study Tukdam.

Tukdam is a state that yogis and practitioners go into after the conventional Western definition of death. It's said that many of these yogis die in a seated posture and remain in a meditation posture when they're dead, according to traditional Western accounts of death — so they no longer have a heartbeat, they are no longer breathing, and yet they are in a seated posture. This is one case of Tukdam. This is another case. This picture was taken four days after he died.

We have been studying these cases in India. We have now published a few papers on them. This raises all kinds of radical questions about the relationship between the mind and the brain. We can perhaps share about them later.