Suffering, the Hippocratic Oath and ... Meditation?

     The Hippocratic Oath is our vow to relieve suffering. Interestingly, the Buddha is claimed to have said “I teach one thing and one only: that is, suffering and the end of suffering.” Could there be synergy between Buddhist-inspired secular meditation practices such as mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) and modern health-care? What effect might meditation have on medical & dental students' idealism & compassion as they weather the corrosive effects of the "hidden curriculum"? See also: http://mindfulnessforeveryone.blogspot.ca/2013/11/432-i-try-and-i-try-but-i-cant-get-no.html

     "For Buddha, as for many modern spiritual leaders, the goal of meditation was as simple as that. The heightened control of the mind that meditation offers was supposed to help its practitioners see the world in a new & more compassionate way, allowing them to break free from the categorizations (us/them, self/other) that commonly divide people from one another."

     Researchers compared the reaction of a group ("meditators") who completed an 8-week meditation course, to those wait-listed ("nonmeditators") when observing a woman entering a waiting room, in pain, on crutches, finding no seats available. "... only 16 percent of the nonmeditators gave up their seats — an admittedly disheartening fact — the proportion rose to 50 percent among those who had meditated. This increase is impressive not solely because it occurred after only eight weeks of meditation, but also because it did so within the context of a situation known to inhibit considerate behavior: witnessing others ignoring a person in distress — what psychologists call the bystander effect — reduces the odds that any single individual will help. Nonetheless, the meditation increased the compassionate response threefold.
     Although we don’t yet know why meditation has this effect, one of two explanations seems likely. The first rests on meditation’s documented ability to enhance attention, which might in turn increase the odds of noticing someone in pain (as opposed to being lost in one’s own thoughts). My favored explanation, though, derives from a different aspect of meditation: its ability to foster a view that all beings are interconnected. ... any marker of affiliation between two people, even something as subtle as tapping their hands together in synchrony, causes them to feel more compassion for each other when distressed. The increased compassion of meditators, then, might stem directly from meditation’s ability to dissolve the artificial social distinctions — ethnicity, religion, ideology & the like — that divide us. 
     Supporting this view, recent findings by the neuroscientists Helen Weng, Richard Davidson & colleagues confirm that even relatively brief training in meditative techniques can alter neural functioning in brain areas associated with empathic understanding of others’ distress — areas whose responsiveness is also modulated by a person’s degree of felt associations with others. 
     So take heart. The next time you meditate, know that you’re not just benefiting yourself, you’re also benefiting your neighbors, community members and as-yet-unknown strangers by increasing the odds that you’ll feel their pain when the time comes, and act to lessen it as well." 

       The Morality of Meditation - David DeSteno - July 5, 2013

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/07/opinion/sunday/the-morality-of-meditation.html?_r=0

 

Child and Wave by John England   http://www.fogforestgallery.ca/bios/bio_england.html