——选自The Atlantic 网站( 吉玛译 )
A scientist and a monk compare notes on meditation, therapy, and their effects on the brain
科学家和僧人就冥想、治疗及其对大脑的影响进行了思想交流
Can training the mind make us more attentive, altruistic, and serene? Can we learn to manage our disturbing emotions in an optimal way? What are the transformations that occur in the brain when we practice meditation? In a new book titled Beyond the Self, two friends—Matthieu Ricard, who left a career as a molecular biologist to become a Buddhist monk in Nepal, and Wolf Singer, a distinguished neuroscientist—engage in an unusually well-matched conversation about meditation and the brain. Below is a condensed and edited excerpt.
培养智慧能让我们变得更专注、更无私、更平静吗? 我们能学会以一种最佳的方式管理我们不安的情绪吗? 当我们练习冥想时，大脑中发生会发生什么变化呢? 在一本名为《超越自我》的新书中的两位朋友——马蒂厄·里卡他放弃了分子生物学家的职业，成为了尼泊尔的一名佛教僧侣;另一个是著名的神经科学家沃尔夫·辛格，进行一场关于冥想和大脑的异常完美的对话。下面是摘录和编辑节选。
Matthieu Ricard: Although one finds in the Buddhist literature many treatises on “traditional sciences”—medicine, cosmology, botanic, logic, and so on—Tibetan Buddhism has not endeavored to the same extent as Western civilizations to expand its knowledge of the world through the natural sciences. Rather it has pursued an exhaustive investigation of the mind for 2,500 years and has accumulated, in an empirical way, a wealth of experiential findings over the centuries. A great number of people have dedicated their whole lives to this contemplative science.
马修·里卡德：尽管在佛教文献中有很多关于“传统科学”的论述——医学、宇宙论、植物学、逻辑学等等，但藏传佛教并没有像西方文明那样通过自然科学扩展其对世界的认识。相反，它对2500年的思想进行了彻底调查，并以实证方法积累了数个世纪以来丰富的经验发现。大量的人把他们的一生奉献给了冥想科学。
Matthieu Ricard: Modern Western psychology began with William James just over a century ago. I can’t help remembering the remark made by Stephen Kosslyn, then chair of the psychology department at Harvard, at the Mind and Life meeting on “Investigating the Mind,” which took place at MIT in 2003. He started his presentation by saying, “I want to begin with a declaration of humility in the face of the sheer amount of data that the contemplatives are bringing to modern psychology.”
马修·里卡德：现代西方心理学始于一个多世纪前的威廉·詹姆斯。我不禁想起了哈佛大学心理学系系主任斯蒂芬·科斯林,在2003年在麻省理工学院的心理与生活会议上发表的关于“探究心灵”的演讲。他在演讲开始时表示，“面对修行者们给现代心理学带来的大量的数据，我想以一种谦逊的态度开始宣讲。”
It does not suffice to ponder how the human psyche works and elaborate complex theories about it, as, for instance, Freud did. Such intellectual constructs cannot replace two millennia of direct investigation of the workings of mind through penetrating introspection conducted with trained minds that have become both stable and clear.
像弗洛伊德那样，仅仅思考人类的心理是如何运作并阐述复杂的理论是不够的。这样的知识结构不能取代两千年来对思想工作的直接研究，这些研究通过训练有素的头脑，使之变得既稳定又清晰。
Wolf Singer: Can you be more specific with this rather bold claim? Why should what nature gave us be fundamentally negative, requiring special mental practice for its elimination, and why should this approach be superior to conventional education or, if conflicts arise, to psychotherapy in its various forms, including psychoanalysis?
沃尔夫· :你能更具体地说说这个大胆的说法吗? 为什么自然赋予我们的本质是负面的，需要特殊的心理实践来消除它，为什么这种方法要优于传统的教育，或者，如果冲突出现，需要以各种形式的心理治疗方式去治疗，包括精神分析?
Ricard: What nature gave us is by no means entirely negative; it is just a baseline. Few people would honestly argue that there is nothing worth improving about the way they live and the way they experience the world. Some people regard their own particular weaknesses and conflicting emotions as a valuable and distinct part of their “personality,” as something that contributes to the fullness of their lives. They believe that this is what makes them unique and argue that they should accept themselves as they are. But isn’t this an easy way to giving up on the idea of improving the quality of their lives, which would cost only some reasoning and effort?
里卡德:自然给予我们的绝不是完全否定的;它只是一个基线。很少有人会诚实地说，他们的生活方式和体验世界的方式没有什么值得改进的。有些人把他们自己的弱点和矛盾的情绪看作是他们“人格”中有价值和独特的一部分，有利于他们生活充实的一部分。他们认为这是他们独特的地方，并认为他们应该接受自己。但是，难道这不是他们放弃改善生活质量的借口吗? 这些借口只需要他们一些推理和努力?
Modern conventional education does not focus on transforming the mind and cultivating basic human qualities such as lovingkindness and mindfulness. As we will see later, Buddhist contemplative science has many things in common with cognitive therapies, in particular with those using mindfulness as a foundation for remedying mental imbalance. As for psychoanalysis, it seems to encourage rumination and explore endlessly the details and intricacies of the clouds of mental confusion and self-centeredness that mask the most fundamental aspect of mind: luminous awareness.
现代的传统教育并不注重思维转变和培养基本的人类品质，如慈爱和正念。我们会看到，佛教的冥想科学与认知疗法有很多共同点，特别是那些以正念作为治疗精神失衡基础的人。至于精神分析，它似乎在鼓励沉思，并无休止地探索精神混乱和自我中心的细节和纷繁难懂之处，掩盖了最基本的思想:清晰的意识。
Singer: So rumination would be the opposite of what you do during meditation?
辛格: 所以沉思与你在冥想时所做的相反吗?
Ricard: Totally opposite. It is also well known that constant rumination is one of the main symptoms of depression. What we need is to gain freedom from the mental chain reactions that rumination endlessly perpetuates. One should learn to let thoughts arise and be freed to go as soon as they arise, instead of letting them invade one’s mind. In the freshness of the present moment, the past is gone, the future is not yet born, and if one remains in pure mindfulness and freedom, potentially disturbing thoughts arise and go without leaving a trace.
里卡德: 完全相反。众所周知，不断的沉思是抑郁症的主要症状之一。我们所需要的是，从反复思考的精神链中获得自由。一个人应该学会让思想出现，并在他们出现的时候要释放他们，而不是让他们侵入你的思想。现在，过去已经过去，未来还没有诞生，如果一个人仍在纯粹的正念和自由中，潜在的烦扰就会出现并不留痕迹的溜走。
Singer: What you have to learn then is to adopt a much more subtle approach to your internal emotional theater, to learn to identify with much higher resolution the various connotations of your feelings.
辛格:你需要学习的是通过一种更微妙的方式来对待你内心的情感，学会用更高的分辨率去识别你的情感的各种隐含意义。
Ricard: That’s right. In the beginning, it is difficult to do it as soon as an emotion arises, but if you become increasingly familiar with such an approach, it becomes quite natural. Whenever anger is just showing its face, we recognize it right away and deal with it before it becomes too strong.
里卡德: 没错。刚开始时，当情绪出现时很难做到，但如果你对这种方法越来越熟悉，就会变得很自然。每当愤怒出现的时候，我们就会立刻意识到它，并在它变得过于强大之前处理它。
Singer: It is not unlike a scientific endeavor except that the analytical effort is directed toward the inner rather than the outer world. Science also attempts to understand reality by increasing the resolving power of instruments, training the mind to grasp complex relations, and decomposing systems into ever-smaller components.
辛格:除了分析工作的直指内心而不是外在之外，这与科学探索不同。科学试图通过增加仪器的的解决能力，训练大脑掌握复杂的关系，将系统分解成更小的组成部分，来理解真理。
Ricard: It is said in the Buddhist teachings that there is no task so difficult that it cannot be broken down into a series of small, easy tasks.
里卡德:佛教教义中说，这一项任务是如此困难，以至于要把它分解成一系列小而简单的任务。
Singer: Your object of inquiry appears to be the mental apparatus and your analytical tool, introspection. This is an interesting self-referential approach that differs from the Western science of mind because it emphasizes the first-person perspective and collapses, in a sense, the instrument of investigation with its object. The Western approach, while using the first-person perspective for the definition of mental phenomena, clearly favors the third-person perspective for its investigation.
辛格: 你的探究对象就像是你反省的精神器官和你的分析工具。这是一种有趣的自我参照方法，与西方的精神科学不同，因为它强调第一人称视角，在某种意义上，调查对象的工具。就心理现象定义，相对于使用第一人称视角，西方显然倾向于第三人称视角进行调查。
I am curious to find out whether the results of analytical introspection match those obtained by cognitive neuroscience. Both approaches obviously try to develop a differentiated and realistic view of cognitive processes.
我很想知道，分析反省的结果是否与认知神经科学所得到的结果相吻合。这两种方法显然都试图发展认知过程的差异和现实观点。
What guarantees that the introspective technique for the dissection of mental phenomena is reliable? If it is the consensus among those who consider themselves experts, how can you compare and validate subjective mental states? There is nothing another person can look at and judge as valid; the observers can only rely on the verbal testimony of subjective states.
是什么保证了解剖精神现象的内省技术是可靠的? 如果那些认为自己是专家的人达成了一致意见，你要如何比较和验证主观的心理状态呢? 没有人可以发现和判断是有效的; 观察者只能依靠主观状态的口头证词。
Ricard: It is the same with scientific knowledge. You first have to rely on the credible testimony of a number of scientists, but later you can train in the subject and verify the findings firsthand. This is quite similar to contemplative science. You first need to refine the telescope of your mind and the methods of investigations for years to find out for yourself what other contemplatives have found and all agreed on. The state of pure consciousness without content, which might seem puzzling at first sight, is something that all contemplatives have experienced. So it is not just some sort of Buddhist dogmatic theory. Anyone who takes the trouble to stabilize and clarify his or her mind will be able to experience it.
里卡德:科学知识也是如此。开始你需要依靠一些科学家的可信的证词，但之后你可以在这个问题上进行练习，并亲自验证这些发现。这与冥想科学很相似。你首先需要精炼你的思维视角和多年的调查方法去发现其他人发现并同意的东西。所有修行者都经历过的空洞的纯意识状态，乍一看似乎令人费解。所以这不仅仅是佛教的教条理论。任何一个为了稳定和阐明自己的想法而努力的人都能体验到它。
Regarding cross-checking interpersonal experience, both contemplatives and the texts dealing with the various experiences a meditator might encounter are quite precise in their descriptions. When a student reports on his inner states of mind to an experienced meditation master, the descriptions are not just vague and poetic. The master will ask precise questions and the student replies, and it is quite clear that they are speaking about something that is well defined and mutually understood.
关于反复验证的人际经验，冥想和思考者处理可能遇到的各种经历的文本，在他们的描述中是相当精确的。当学生向一位有经验的冥想大师阐述自己内心的状态时，这些描述不仅是模糊的、诗意的。老师会问一些精确的问题让学生回答，很明显他们是在说一些很好定义和相互理解的东西。
However, in the end, what really matters is the way the person gradually changes. If, over months and years, someone becomes less impatient, less prone to anger, and less torn apart by hopes and fears, then the method he or she has been using is a valid one.
然而，最终，真正重要的是人逐渐改变的方式。如果，在几个月或几年的时间里，某人变得不那么不耐烦，不那么容易发怒，很少因为希望和恐惧而心痛欲裂，那么他或她所使用的方法是有效的。
An ongoing study seems to indicate that while they are engaged in meditation, practitioners can clearly distinguish, like everyone who is not distracted, between pleasant and aversive stimuli, but they react much less emotionally than control subjects. While retaining the capacity of being fully aware of something, they succeed in not being carried away by their emotional responses.
一项正在进行的研究似乎表明，当他们在进行冥想时，就像所有不分心的人一样，实践者可以清楚地分辨出，愉快和厌恶之间的刺激，但与控制对象相比，情感上的反应要少得多。当他们对于某件事保持充分意识时，他们能够成功地不被其他情感反应所影响。
Singer: How do you do this? What are the tools? 辛格:你要如何做到呢?工具是什么? Ricard: This process requires perseverance. You need to train again and again. You can’t learn to play tennis by holding a racket for a few minutes every few months. With meditation, the effort is aimed at developing not a physical skill but an inner enrichment.
里卡德:这个过程需要毅力。你需要一次又一次的练习。你不可能每隔几个月就拿着球拍几分钟就学会打网球。通过冥想，努力的目的是培养一种内在的充实，而不是一种身体技能。
In extreme cases, you could be in a simple hermitage in which nothing changes or sitting alone always facing the same scene day after day. So the outer enrichment is almost nil, but the inner enrichment is maximal. You are training your mind all day long with little outer stimulation. Furthermore, such enrichment is not passive, but voluntary, and methodically directed. When you engage for eight or more hours a day in cultivating certain mental states that you have decided to cultivate and that you have learned to cultivate, you reprogram the brain.
在极端的情况下，你在一个简单的隐居生活中，没有任何情感变化或独自坐着，日复一日地面对着同样的场景。因此，外在的充实感几乎为零，但内在的充实感得到最大化。在没有外在刺激的情况下，你每天都在训练你的大脑。此外，这种充实感不是被动的，而是自愿的且有条不紊的。当你每天花8个小时或更多的时间来培养你决定要培养和你已经学会培养的精神状态时，你重塑了你的大脑。
Singer: In a sense, you make your brain the object of a sophisticated cognitive process that is turned inward rather than outward toward the world around you. You apply the cognitive abilities of the brain to studying its own organization and functioning, and you do so in an intentional and focused way, similar to when you attend to events in the outer world and when you organize sensory signals into coherent percepts. You assign value to certain states and you try to increase their prevalence, which probably goes along with a change in synaptic connectivity in much the same way as it occurs with learning processes resulting from interactions with the outer world.
辛格:从某种意义上说，你使你的大脑成为一个复杂的认知过程的对象，是一个向内转变而不是向你周围的世界发展的过程。与你关注外部世界的事件，以及当你把感觉信号组织成连贯的知觉时一样，以一种有意识和专注的方式，运用大脑的认知能力来研究它自己的组织和功能。你给某些状态赋值，试着增加它们的广泛度，这很可能与突触连接性的变化有很大的关系，所发生的的方式与外部世界互动的学习过程一样。
Let us perhaps briefly recapitulate how the human brain adapts to the environment because this developmental process can also be seen as a modification or reprogramming of brain functions. Brain development is characterized by a massive proliferation of connections and is paralleled by a shaping process through which the connections being formed are either stabilized or deleted according to functional criteria, using experience and interaction with the environment as the validation criterion. This developmental reorganization continues until the age of about 20. The early stages serve the adjustment of sensory and motor functions, and the later phases primarily involve brain systems responsible for social abilities. Once these developmental processes come to an end, the connectivity of the brain becomes fixed, and large-scale modifications are no longer possible.
让我们简要概括一下人类大脑是如何适应环境的，因为这种发育过程也可以被看作是大脑功能的修改或重塑。大脑发育以大规模的扩散连接为的特点，是一个平行的形成过程， 通过这个过程，以使用经验和与环境的交互作为验证准则，根据功能标准，稳定或删除正在形成的关系。这种发展重组一直持续到20岁左右。早期的阶段服务于感觉和运动功能的调整，后期阶段主要涉及负责社交能力的大脑系统。一旦这些发展过程结束，大脑的连接就固定且不可以大规模的修改。
Ricard: To some extent.
里卡德:在某种程度上
Singer: To some extent, yes. The existing synaptic connections remain modifiable, but you can’t grow new long-range connections. In a few distinct regions of the brain, such as the hippocampus and olfactory bulb, new neurons are generated throughout life and inserted into the existing circuits, but this process is not large-scale, at least not in the neocortex, where higher cognitive functions are supposed to be realized.
辛格:是的，在某种程度上。现有的突触连接仍然可以改变，但不能长出新的长期的连接。在大脑的一些不同区域，如海马体和嗅球，新的神经元会在整个生命过程中产生并插入到现有的连接中，但是这个过程不是大规模的，至少在认知功能被认为是可以实现的新大脑皮层中是不存在的。
Ricard: A study of people who have practiced meditation for a long time demonstrates that structural connectivity among the different areas of the brain is higher in meditators than in a control group. Hence, there must be another kind of change allowed by the brain.
里卡德：研究表明，对长期练习冥想的人，冥想者大脑不同区域的结构连接比控制组的要高。因此，大脑肯定会有另一种变化。
Singer: I have no difficulty in accepting that a learning process can change behavioral dispositions, even in adults. There is ample evidence of this from reeducation programs, where practice leads to small but incremental behavior modifications. There is also evidence for quite dramatic and sudden changes in cognition, emotional states, and coping strategies. In this case, the same mechanisms that support learning—distributed changes in the efficiency of synaptic connections—lead to drastic alterations of global brain states.
辛格:我毫不费力认同，学习过程可以改变行为倾向，甚至是成年人。从再教育项目中可以得到大量的证据，在这些项目中，实践形成了微小但渐进式的行为矫正。在认知、情绪状态和应对策略方面，也有相当戏剧性和突变的证据。在这种情况下，同样的支持学习机制--突触连接效率的分布变化——导致全球大脑状态的戏剧性的变化。
Ricard: You could also change the flow of neuron activity, as when the traffic on a road increases significantly.
里卡德:你也可以改变神经元活动的流程，就像道路上的交通量显著增加一样。
Singer: Yes. What changes with learning and training in the adult is the flow of activity. The fixed hardware of anatomical connections is rather stable after age 20, but it is still possible to route activity flexibly from A to B or from A to C by adding certain signatures to the activity that ensure that a given activation pattern is not broadcast in a diffuse way to all connected brain regions but sent only to selected target areas.
辛格:是的。成人学习和训练的变化是活动的流程。在20岁以后，解剖连接的固定硬件相当稳定的,但仍有可能灵活地从A活动到到B，或者从A到C，通过添加特定信号到活动中, 确保给定的激活模式不是以扩散方式释放到所有连接大脑区域只到选定目标区域。
Ricard: So far, the results of the studies conducted with trained meditators indicate that they have the faculty to generate clean, powerful, well-defined states of mind, and this faculty is associated with some specific brain patterns. Mental training enables one to generate those states at will and to modulate their intensity, even when confronted with disturbing circumstances, such as strong positive or negative emotional stimuli. Thus, one acquires the faculty to maintain an overall emotional balance that favors inner strength and peace.
里卡德:迄今为止，通过训练有素的冥想者进行的研究表明，他们有能力产生明确、强有力的、明确的精神状态，而这种能力与某些特定的大脑模式有关。心理训练使人能够随心所欲地产生这些状态，并调节其强度，即使在遇到令人不安的情况时，例如强烈的积极或消极的情绪刺激时。这样，就能获得一种维持情感平衡的能力来支撑内在的能力和平和。
Singer: So you have to use your cognitive abilities to identify more clearly and delineate more sharply the various emotional states, and to train your control systems, probably located in the frontal lobe, to increase or decrease selectively the activity of subsystems responsible for the generation of the various emotions.
辛格:所以你必须运用你的认知能力来更清晰地识别和描述各种情绪状态，并训练位于额叶中的控制系统，有选择地增加或减少产生各种情绪的子系统活动。
An analogy for this process of refinement could be the improved differentiation of objects of perception, which is known to depend on learning. With just a little experience, you are able to recognize an animal as a dog. With more experience, you can sharpen your eye and become able to distinguish with greater and greater precision dogs that look similar. Likewise, mental training might allow you to sharpen your inner eye for the distinction of emotional states.
众所周知，细化过程的类比可以是感知对象的改进分化，它依赖于学习。只要有一点经验，你就能认出动物是狗。有了更多的经验，你可以提高眼界，并能更加精确的区分看起来相似的狗。同样地，心理训练也能让你敏锐地注意到情绪状态的区别。
In the naïve state, you are able to distinguish good and bad feelings only in a global way. With practice, these distinctions would become increasingly refined until you could distinguish more and more nuances. The taxonomy of mental states should thus become more differentiated. If this is the case, then cultures exploiting mental training as a source of knowledge should have a richer vocabulary for mental states than cultures that are more interested in investigating phenomena of the outer world.
在这种幼稚的状态下，你只能以一种全球性的方式来区分好的和坏的感觉。在实践中，这些区别会变得越来越精细，直到你能区分出越来越多的细微差别。因此，精神状态的分类应该变得更有区别。在这种情况下，相比那些对外部世界的现象更感兴趣的文化，利用心理训练作为知识的来源文化，对于心理状态应该有更丰富的词汇。
Ricard: Buddhist taxonomy describes 58 main mental events and various subdivisions thereof. It is quite true that by conducting an in-depth investigation of mental events, one becomes able to distinguish increasingly more subtle nuances.
里卡德:佛教分类学描述了58个主要的心理事件和不同的细分。通过对精神事件进行深入的调查，人们能够区分越来越细微的细微差别，这是完全正确的。
Take anger, for instance. Often anger can have a malevolent component, but it can also be rightful indignation in the face of injustice. Anger can be a reaction that allows us to rapidly overcome an obstacle preventing us from achieving something worthwhile or remove an obstacle threatening us. However, it could also reflect a tendency to be short-tempered. If you look carefully at anger, you will see that it contains aspects of clarity, focus, and effectiveness that are not harmful in and of themselves. So if you are able to recognize those aspects that are not yet negative and let your mind remain in them, without drifting into the destructive aspects, then you will not be troubled and confused by these emotions.
比如愤怒。愤怒往往有恶意的成分，但在面对不公时，它也可能是正当的愤怒。愤怒可以是一种反应，它能让我们迅速克服阻止我们达成有价值的事情的障碍，或消除威胁我们的障碍。然而，它也可能反映出一种脾气暴躁的倾向。如果你仔细观察愤怒，你会发现它包含了清晰、专注和有效的方面，这些都是无害的。所以，如果你能够认识到那些不消极的方面，让你的思想停留在积极的一面，而不是陷入破坏性的方面，那么你就不会被这些情绪所困扰和迷惑。
Another result of cultivating mental skills is that, after a while, you will no longer need to apply contrived efforts. You can deal with the arising of mental perturbations like the eagles I see from the window of my hermitage in the Himalayas. The crows often attack them, even though they are much smaller. They dive at the eagles from above trying to hit them with their beaks. However, instead of getting alarmed and moving around to avoid the crow, the eagle simply retracts one wing at the last moment, letting the diving crow pass by, and extends its wing back out. The whole thing requires minimal effort and is perfectly efficient. Being experienced in dealing with the sudden arising of emotions in the mind works in a similar way. When you are able to preserve a clear state of awareness, you see thoughts arise; you let them pass through your mind, without trying to block or encourage them; and they vanish without creating many waves.
培养心智技能的另一个结果是，在一段时间之后，你将不再需要使用人为的努力。你可以像我隐居在喜马拉雅山脉时，透过窗户看到的鹰一样，来处理精神上的不安。乌鸦经常攻击它们，尽管它们小得多。它们从上面俯冲而下，试图用它们的喙攻击它们。然而，老鹰没有被吓到，或者四处移动以躲避乌鸦，它只是在最后一刻缩回了一只翅膀，让那只俯冲的乌鸦飞过，然后再伸展它们的翅膀。整个过程，无须付出太多并有巨大的效益。在处理头脑中情绪的突然出现时，处理的方式也是相似的。当你能够保持一种清醒的意识状态时，你会抓住闪现的想法; 它们会无意识的闯入你的大脑;毫无声息的消失。
Singer: That reminds me of what we do when we encounter severe difficulties that require fast solutions, such as a complicated traffic situation. We immediately call on a large repertoire of escape strategies that we have learned and practiced, and then we choose among them without much reasoning, relying mainly on subconscious heuristics. Apparently, if we are not experienced with contemplative practice, we haven’t gone through the driving school for the management of emotional conflicts. Would you say this is a valid analogy?
辛格：这让我想起当我们需要快速解决严峻的困难时，比如复杂的交通状况。我们的头脑中会涌现无数的我们学习和实践过的逃生策略，然后我们会依靠潜意识的启发，无缘由的选择其中的一策略。很显然，如果我们没有经历过冥想练习，我们就无法通过驾驶学校学习来管理情感冲突。你认为这是一个有效的类比吗?
Ricard: Yes, complex situations become greatly simplified through training and the cultivation of effortless awareness. When you learn to ride a horse, as a beginner you are constantly preoccupied, trying not to fall at every movement the horse makes. Especially when the horse starts galloping, it puts you on high alert. But when you become an expert rider, everything becomes easier. Riders in eastern Tibet, for instance, can do all kinds of acrobatics, such as shooting arrows at a target or catching something on the ground while galloping at full speed, and they do all that with ease and a big smile on their face.
里卡德：是的，通过训练和毫不费力的意识的培养，复杂的情况大大简化了。作为一个初学者，当你学骑马时，你会不断地全神贯注，在马做任何动作的情况下，尽量不去跌倒。尤其当马开始飞奔时，它会使你处于高度戒备状态。但是当你成为一个专家的时候，一切都变得容易了。例如，西藏东部的骑手可以做各种各样的杂技动作，举个例子，在全速奔跑时，在目标上射箭或捕捉地面上的东西，他们面带微笑，轻松地做着这些高难度动作。
One study with meditators showed that they can maintain their attention at an optimal level for extended periods of time. When performing what is called a continuous performance task, even after 45 minutes, they did not become tense and were not distracted even for a moment. When I did this task myself, I noticed that the first few minutes were challenging and required some effort, but once I entered a state of “attentional flow,” it became easier.
一项关于冥想者的研究表明，他们可以在很长一段时间内保持最佳的注意力。在执行所谓的持续性操作测验时，即使是在45分钟之后，他们也不会变得紧张，甚至不会分心。当我自己完成这项任务时，我注意到最初的几分钟很有挑战性，需要一些努力，但当我进入“注意力流程”状态时，就变得更容易了。
Singer: This resembles a general strategy that the brain applies when acquiring new skills. In the naïve state, one uses conscious control to perform a task. The task is broken down into a series of subtasks that are sequentially executed. This requires attention, takes time, and is effortful. Later, after practice, the performance becomes automatized. Usually, the execution of the skilled behavior is then accomplished by different brain structures than those involved in the initial learning and execution of the task. Once this shift has occurred, performance becomes automatic, fast, and effortless and no longer requires cognitive control. This type of learning is called procedural learning and requires practice. Such automatized skills often save you in difficult situations because you can access them quickly. They can also often cope with more variables simultaneously due to parallel processing. Conscious processing is more serialized and therefore takes more time.
辛格：这类似于大脑在获取新技能时使用的一般策略。在天真的状态下，一个人用有意识的控制来完成一项任务。任务被分解成一系列子任务有序的执行。这需要注意，需要时间和努力。后来，经过实践，性能变得自动化。通常，技能型行为的执行是由不同的大脑结构完成的，而不是通过最初的学习和任务执行。一旦这种转变发生，性能就会自动、快速、轻松，不再需要认知控制。这种类型的学习称为程序性学习，需要实践。这种自动化的技能通常会在困难的情况下帮助你，因为你可以想到它们。由于平行处理，它们还可以同时处理更多的变量。意识处理更加序列化，因此需要更多的时间。
Do you think you can apply the same learning strategy to your emotions by learning to pay attention to them, differentiate them, and thereby familiarize yourself with their dynamics so as to later become able to rely on automatized routines for their management in case of conflict?
你认为你能运用同样的学习策略吗？通过学习关注他们，区分他们，使你自己熟悉他们的动态，从而使得你在冲突发生时能够依靠自动化的程序来管理情绪?
Ricard: You seem to be describing the meditation process. In the teachings, it says that when one begins to meditate, on compassion, for instance, one experiences a contrived, artificial form of compassion. However, by generating compassion over and over again, it becomes second nature and spontaneously arises, even in the midst of a complex and challenging situation.
里卡德：你似乎在描述冥想的过程。例如，在教学中，当一个人开始冥想同情时，他经历了一个做作的，虚假的同情。然而，通过一次又一次的产生同情，它变成了第二天性，即使是在一个复杂和充满挑战的情况下，也能自然而然地产生。
Singer: It would be really interesting to look with neurobiological tools at whether you have the same shift of function that you observe in other cases where familiarization through learning and training leads to the automation of processes. In brain scans, one observes that different brain structures take over when skills that are initially acquired under the control of consciousness become automatic.
辛格：用神经生物学的工具来观察你是否有相同的功能转移是非常有趣的，通过学习和训练来熟悉你所观察的情况，会导致过程的自动化。通过脑部扫描，人们观察到不同的大脑结构在意识控制下的最初获得的技能是自动生成的。
Ricard: That is what a study conducted by Julie Brefczynski and Antoine Lutz at Richard Davidson’s lab seems to indicate. Brefczynski and Lutz studied the brain activity of novice, relatively experienced, and very experienced meditators when they engage in focused attention. Different patterns of activity were observed depending on the practitioners’ level of experience.
里卡德：Julie Brefczynski和Antoine Lutz在理查德·戴维森实验室的所做的研究似乎表明了这一点。Brefczynski和Lutz研究了新手、相对经验丰富的、经验丰富的冥想者在集中注意力时的大脑活动。不同的活动模式取决于实践者的经验水平。
Relatively experienced meditators (with an average of 19,000 hours of practice) showed more activity in attention-related brain regions compared with novices. Paradoxically, the most experienced meditators (with an average of 44,000 hours of practice) demonstrated less activation than the ones without as much experience. These highly advanced meditators appear to acquire a level of skill that enables them to achieve a focused state of mind with less effort. These effects resemble the skill of expert musicians and athletes capable of immersing themselves in the “flow” of their performances with a minimal sense of effortful control. This observation accords with other studies demonstrating that when someone has mastered a task, the cerebral structures put into play during the execution of this task are generally less active than they were when the brain was still in the learning phase.
相对有经验的冥想者(平均有19000小时的练习时间)与新手相比，注意力相关的大脑区域表现的更活跃。矛盾的是，最有经验的冥想者(平均有4万4千小时的练习)相较与没有经验的冥想者表现的更不活跃。这些高度发达的冥想者似乎获得了一种技能，使他们能够以更少的努力达到专注的状态。这些效果类似于音乐家和运动员的技巧，他们能够以最小的努力来控制它们自己沉浸在表现流程中。这一观察结果与其他研究一致，证明当一个人掌握了一项任务时，在执行这项任务时，大脑结构的活跃程度通常低于仍处于学习阶段时的活跃程度。
Singer: This suggests that the neuronal codes become sparser, perhaps involving fewer but more specialized neurons, once skills become highly familiar and are executed with great expertise. To become a real expert seems to require then at least as much training as is required to become a world-class violin or piano player. With four hours of practice a day, it would take you 30 years of daily meditation to attain 44,000 hours. Remarkable!
辛格：这表明，一旦你熟悉一项技能并具有很高的专业技能，神经编码就会变得稀疏，所涉及到的神经元相对较少但更专业的。要成为一个真正的专家，至少需要像成为世界级小提琴或钢琴演奏家那样的训练。如果每天练习4个小时，需要30年的冥想才能达到4万4千个小时。多么的不同寻常！
