‘Destructive Emotions’: What Buddhism Can Teach the West
‘Destructive Emotions’, by Daniel Goleman, reviewed.
It is now a commonplace that the brain is ‘plastic’: though fixed in size, its proportions can change. Black cab-drivers, due to the effort they make learning London’s roads by heart, have more grey matter in the hippocampus, the part of the brain linked most strongly to episodic memory. The brains of experienced violinists are more developed in the regions connected to playing than in the brains of their less musical peers. And so on.
The implications of this are quite thrilling. Building in part on the finding that ‘neurons that wire together, fire together’ — in other words, that repeated thoughts or feelings become habitual — neuroplasticity suggests that we are not so set in our ways as we once thought. We are not doomed to be forever how we are at this moment, as the Western tradition has taken for granted. We can, with conscious effort, change profoundly at the level of our brain.
This has been understood and exploited in the Buddhist tradition for more than two millennia. And more and more, Westerners are taking note. In Destructive Emotions, Daniel Goleman relates the eighth Mind and Life Conference, where philosophers and scientists, mostly from the West, engaged in a lengthy dialogue to the Dalai Lama and other ‘senior’ figures in Buddhism, with the aim of learning more.
Daniel Goleman relates the eighth Mind and Life Conference, where philosophers and scientists, mostly from the West, engaged in a lengthy dialogue to the Dalai Lama.
Happily, this was a two-way dialogue, for the Dalai Lama has had a lifelong interest in science. From an early age, he has taken things apart and put them back together; he used to break apart and rebuild watches, something very hard to do. He has even said that he will do away with any Buddhist teaching disproved by modern science. And what is remarkable is that so far, this hasn’t happened. It was the Daila Lama’s interest in science that inspired the Chilean neuroscientist Francisco Varela and the entrepreneur Adam Engle to set up the Mind and Life Conference.
But the book does not start here. Rather, it starts with the story of the experiments run on Lama Öser, a European Buddhist monk with decades of experience in meditation. The findings were striking. Lama Öser was found to be almost incapable of negative emotion, certainly for longer than a moment, and was also a highly effective debater and reader of body language and emotions. He had an extraordinary memory and, in what Goleman seems to have found most impressive, no startle response whatsoever when meditating. Goleman tells us first that the strength of a person’s startle response is a good indication of their general neuroticism, and that no one — even firearms officers used to loud, sudden noises — has ever suppressed the response before.
What follows is some scene-setting and then a description of the events of the conference. Goleman describes each presentation by each scientist in detail, and the question-and-answer sessions that follow. It is clear early on that these presentations are directed squarely at the Dalai Lama, and that the Dalai Lama is often the one asking the questions. The most interesting exchanges come about when there is a disagreement (is anger always inherently ‘destructive’, for instance?) but by and large modern science seems to validate much of the inherited wisdom of Buddhist doctrine concerning our emotions.
The most interesting exchanges come about when there is a disagreement, but by and large modern science seems to validate much of the inherited wisdom of Buddhist doctrine concerning our emotions.
The central theme of the book is that we can overcome our most destructive emotions, which runs counter to the conventional Western view that our personality and emotional responses are fixed. We can overcome our emotions most effectively through meditation, which has a long history in Buddhism and whose efficacy is now supported by more than 10,000 peer-reviewed studies. (It is not true, incidentally, that meditation is innately Eastern: there is a rich tradition of contemplative prayer in Christianity, and Andrew Newberg and others have confirmed that these and other spiritual practices such as praying the rosary provide many, if not all, of the same benefits as meditation. Nevertheless, that mindfulness meditation is so non-religious in character gives it a certain appeal to secular Westerners.) At any rate, by allowing our emotions to arise and observing them without judgement until they subside again, we ‘rewire’ our brains. We change, and we change for the better.
Goleman’s challenge is taking discussions of neuroscience, psychology, and Buddhist philosophy and turning them into a narrative that is accessible to a lay audience. In my view he goes a bit too far at times—that is, he over-explains—but he nonetheless succeeds in making his subject intelligible. And that is the point: the book is intended to be didactic, and there is plenty to glean from it. We can just about forgive Daniel Goleman for the book’s length and for his tendency to note in minute detail the reactions of those present during each of the presentations given at the conference. Goleman is fond of talking about the Dalai Lama’s warmth and expressiveness, for instance; in a Buddhist monk, you feel this might be expected.
In sum, Destructive Emotions is an interesting study, through the medium of something like reportage, of how Buddhism can inform Western science in respect of how we think about our emotions. What Buddhism reassures us is that we are not the lifelong victims of our make-up, but have the capacity to grow.
