Source: Religion News Service
http://www.kansascity.com/255/story/835323.html
Zen Buddhist meditation may help treat depression, attention deficit disorder and anxiety, among other maladies, according to a recent study by Emory University neuroscientists.
Mental illness such as obsessive-compulsive disorder and depression are characterized in part by “excessive rumination” or runaway thoughts, said Giuseppe Pagnoni, a neuroscientist at Emory in Atlanta.
Zen meditators show an enhanced ability to control their mind’s focus and disentangle it from distracting or harmful preoccupations, Pagnoni says. His paper, “Thinking About Not-Thinking: Neural Correlates of Conceptual Processing During Zen Meditation,” was published in September by the online medical and scientific journal PLoS ONE ( www.plosone.org).
Unlike other forms of meditation — for example, imagining yourself on a tropical beach — Zen discourages mental vacations and “prescribes a vigilant attitude” toward one’s current surroundings, as Pagnoni says. By focusing on the here and now, practitioners are less likely to get carried away, according to Buddhist teaching.