Last Updated on February 22, 2025 by pg@petergamma.org
Around 20 years ago, Matthieu Ricard was given the title of the „Happiest man in the word“ by a newspaper:
Matthieu Ricard gave us hope for a revolution in meditation research based on a PNAS paper from 2004:
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0407401101
But 20 years later Peter Gamma from www.petergamma.org
does not believe in this revolution anymore. Since 20 years later, people like Rob ter Horst want to sell us smartwatches:
Which are only of very limited use for scientific purposes:
And Richard R. Davidson brain scanners:
But who uses these devices as a daily tool for their meditation? Since where are the revolutionary scientific data about meditation research 20 years after these projects have started? Data which are published in Nature and Science, journals in which also Prof. Dr. Knöpfel who does research in Hong Kong publishes his results,too?
And do the good teachings not comes from the world-renounced spiritual teachers such as the Dalai Lama the 14 th, Jack Kornfield, but also from new-comers such as Yangsi Rhinpoche?
Yangsi recently lost his job in his monastery, since the Nepal’s Shechen Monastery ended it s affiliation with Dilgo Khyentse Yangsi:
https://www.lionsroar.com/nepals-shechen-monastery-ends-affiliation-with-dilgo-khyentse-yangsi
We do not mean that this was a good teaching by Yangsi, absolutely not. It was absolutely the opposite. What Yangsi did was not revolutionary, it was terrible. Was it a planned rebellion? A rebellion with the goal to loose his job in the monastery he eventually hated? Did you not have the impression when you listened to one of his latest talks that it was like that? And was his terrible act really something new?
Or did he only follow the the example of Ogyen Trinley Dorje, the 17th Karmapa, who also was accused of sexual assault?:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogyen_Trinley_Dorje
With the goal to loose his job in the Shechen Monastery in Nepal he eventually hated? Since Yangsi is a human being which was forced into a job he had not chosen by himself, but was dictated by others?
Next to these terrible acts we absolutely condemn, was it not interesting to observe the spiritual development of Yangsi? A new spiritual teacher on the path to enlightenment following the example of his famous per-cessor who meditated in solitary retreat for 20 years? Yangsi did not meditate in solitary retreat as his pre-cessor. But he spent his life in the monastery up to around 30 years. And is this not the age someone would expect that a practitioner is enlightened? And did he not go onto a world tour and was talking about these things shortly before these terrible things happened?
And is the development of a new teacher not something which is much more interesting than Rob ter Horst s smartwatches and Richard Davidson s brain scanners?
Aren t these teachers, one of them surely a controversial one, not guiding stars for many? And 20 years after the revolutionary PNAS paper from 2024, Peter Gamma from www.petergamma.org is asking:
Is „Altered Traits“
the end of a meditation research project which started in 2024? The excellent science journalist Daniel Golemann has summarized everything he know about this topic. And he has studied it over decades. And Daniel Goleman hold a Ph.D. in clinical psychology at Harvard University. But Golemans results where not published in Nature and Science, but in a popular scientific best-selling books. And are these best-sellers not often the end point of scientific projects? Such which are not suitable for receiving a Nobel prize for it, or a fund from the Swiss National Science foundation, but which are scientific topics which are only suitable to write popular scientific books which fit the needs of the readers? Until these readers find out that these books do not offer what they where looking for? Since these books where mainly interesting for the book-sellers to make money out of it, and they will be forgotten by their readers, soon?
And if the most word-renowned spiritual teachers do not use Apple watches and brain scanners for their daily meditation practice, can we not entitle those who want to sell us these device for meditators all the same, the “worst meditation researchers in the word”? Since is their goal not to bring light into darkness, but to sell us books and smartwatches? And is it not a negative act to sell the seekers of the truth something which is only of limited use for those? And is it not much more interesting to do science about is the spiritual development of Yangsi, a new spiritual teacher from Nepal, although he recently have become controversial?