Leisure Studies
77
• The compelling complaint that “outcomes” related to Positive
Psychology is being and has been marketed beyond what can be
legitimately supported by “the science” can hardly be disputed.
However, by whom has it been sold in this way? Academic
journals do legitimately insulate activity from the commercial
market place. However, when speaker’s fees are correlated with
publication history, there is the suggestion of segue from “publish
or perish” to “publish and profit.”
• On occasion, it is pointed out that specific research exists that
contradicts earlier widely reported findings. In a certain sense, that
the base of the research program is broad, including occasional
frankly contradictory publications sustains rather than nullifies the
process of seeking understanding in this domain. After all, that’s
the process of Baconian science: test, retest, and correct.
Anyway, The New York Times has reported on new information carried in
the journal of Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging. According to the journalist,
“those who meditated for about 30 minutes a day for eight weeks had
measurable changes in gray-matter density in parts of the brain associated with
memory, sense of self, empathy, and stress” (Bhanoo, NYT, 2011). Adherents
have long described anecdotal benefits of meditation.
Syndya Bhanoo in her story. How Meditation May Change the Brain (2011)
explains that “previous studies have also shown that there are structural
differences between the brains of mediators and those who don’t meditate,
although this new study [in Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging] is the first to
document changes in gray matter over time through meditation” (Bhanoo, NYT,
2011). Still, David Eagleman, head of the Laboratory for Perception and Action
at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston has pointed out bluntly in an
interview that “the assumption that all brains have the same capacities is
charitable but demonstrably false” (Slate, May 7 2011). Perhaps leisure should
be defined in some ways after the manner we define tourism: the primary
characteristic being possession of the resources which allow actual participation
in the thing itself
The middle way is a path of moderation between the extremes of selfindulgence and self-mortification (indeed, the balance between such polarities as
are available). It is a telling detail that a woman (or, in some versions of the
folkloric narrative, a girl) had the good sense to bring food and drink—what I
will always consider to be markers of domestic happiness—into Siddhartha’s
thoughtful orbit of contemplation.
That w&VB6