10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works

Harris’s viewpoint regarding metta changed when he met the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism. Harris met the man known as “His Holiness” with a great deal of skepticism and caution. However, he was put at ease by the Dalai Lama’s embrace of scientific inquiry and his reputation for funding such endeavors to prove the mind-body connection in meditation. When Harris asked him about the practice of compassion meditation, the Dalai Lama explained that the “[p]ractice of compassion is ultimately benefit to you. So I usually describe: we are selfish, but we are wise selfish rather than foolish selfish” (183). This resonated with Harris, who began to understand metta was another way to erode the ego.

Once again, Harris looked to the scientific community to back up his own ideas. At Emory University, a study showed that compassion meditation lowered “a stress hormone called cortisol […] the persistent release of [which] can lead to heart disease, diabetes, dementia, cancer, and depression” (184). At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, MRI studies showed that the brain responded to compassion meditation by triggering increased activity in the brain region that ruled empathy (185).