Arpana-INFJ

When the dharma arrived in western lands 40 to 50 years ago it was an inevitability that sooner or later comparisons and contrasts would be made with the west's very own project for overcoming suffering: psychotherapy.

Despite both practices having the aim of relieving human suffering there has been an atmosphere of mutual distrust. Upon hearing of this practice which aimed to heal and bolster the self the Asian masters simply saw in it methods of making the self's experience of samsara more comfortable. Therefore they saw it as something which would actually bind people to samsara.

On the other hand psychotherapists saw dharma practitioners as being involved in the unhealthy practice of attempting to transcend the self, cutting themselves of from their own vitality and ignoring developmental tasks.

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Punditry is all about predictions -- claiming boldly that if ___________ comes to power, the economy will be in ruins within a year, or if ___________ legislation passes, the nation will turn into a fascist nightmare (or a lawless orgy, or whatever). A 20-year study of pundits and their prognostications found that they performed significantly worse than, say, a monkey making political predictions by throwing its own faeces at a chart. The hard-line partisan pundits were right a dismal 12 percent of the time.


The monkey had 19 percent accuracy -- 24 percent on the days he ate a lot of fiber.

But the really scary statistic is that the more famous a political pundit is, the worse his predictions are. There's a reason the Becks and Olbermanns of the world are the pundits everyone's familiar with: They're not giving us accurate predictions, but they are giving us predictions we like to hear, whether we care to admit it or not. Not just predictions we agree with, but bold, scary and outrageous predictions. They make for good entertainment.

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Montreal, January 26, 2011 - 'Stand by me' is a common refrain when it comes to friendship but new research from Concordia University proves that the concept goes beyond pop music: keeping friends close has real physiological and psychological benefits.

The presence of a best friend directly affects children going through negative experiences, as reported in the recent Concordia-based study, which was published in the journal Developmental Psychology and conducted with the collaboration of researchers at the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center and the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Feelings of self-worth and levels of cortisol, a hormone produced naturally by the adrenal gland in direct response to stress, are largely dependent on the social context of a negative experience.

"Having a best friend present during an unpleasant event has an immediate impact on a child's body and mind," says co-author William M. Bukowski, a psychology professor and director of the Concordia Centre for Research in Human Development. "If a child is alone when he or she gets in trouble with a teacher or has an argument with a classmate, we see a measurable increase in cortisol levels and decrease in feelings of self-worth."

A total of 55 boys and 48 girls from grades 5 and 6 in local Montreal schools took part in the study. Participants kept journals on their feelings and experiences over the course of four days and submitted to regular saliva tests that monitored cortisol levels.

Although previous studies have shown that friendships can protect against later adjustment difficulties, this study is the first to definitively demonstrate that the presence of a friend results in an immediate benefit for the child undergoing a negative experience.

These results have far-reaching implications. "Our physiological and psychological reactions to negative experiences as children impacts us later in life," explains Bukowski. "Excessive secretion of cortisol can lead to significant physiological changes, including immune suppression and decreased bone formation. Increased stress can really slow down a child's development." When it comes to feelings of self-worth, Bukowski goes on, "what we learn about ourselves as children is how we form our adult identities. If we build up feelings of low self-worth during childhood, this will translate directly into how we see ourselves as adults."

The study builds on previous research at Concordia that has shown multiple friendships inoculate against negative outcomes such as bullying, exclusion and other kinds of aggression.

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