Destructive Emotions - The Dalai Lama & Daniel Goleman
Destructive Emotions a dialogue with The Dalai Lama narrated by Daniel Goleman, Bantam Books, Jan, 2003.
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This book is an account, by Daniel Goleman, of the eighth Mind and Life meeting between the Dalai Lama and western scientists. This meeting was called Destructive Emotions, where "destructive emotions" are those that cause harm to ourselves or others.
The meeting explored how destructive emotions eat away at the mind and heart, and how they might be countered. Buddhist spiritual practice involves recognizing and transforming destructive emotions. The Dalai Lama wanted a scientific perspective on what Buddhists call the Three Poison's: hatred, craving, and delusion.
Paul Ekman suggested that destructive emotions are an evolutionary trade-off. This led to a point of tension between the Buddhist and scientific approaches which are explored in depth in this book.
The book opens with a Lama undergoing brain scans while performing six different meditation techniques. These included:
- one-pointedness: mind focussed on one object, so destructive emotions could not occupy the mind.
- open: mind not focussed on any object.
- fearlessness: hold in the mind one thought: "I have nothing to gain nothing to lose".
- compassion: focus on everyone's suffering, and allow the wish for everyone to be free from suffering to soak the mind.
EEG analysis showed that activity in part of the left frontal lobe increased during the meditation on compassion. This is the locus for positive emotions. The book explores this and other methods of increasing positive emotions, and decreasing destructive emotions, in some detail.