Buddha’s Brain
Buddha's Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love and Wisdom: Rick Hanson
“I make myself rich by making my wants few.”
Fleeting Thoughts Leave Lasting Marks
When your mind changes, your brain changes, too. In the saying from the work of the psychologist Donald Hebb: when neurons fire together, they wire together—mental activity actually creates new neural structures (Hebb 1949; LeDoux 2003). As a result, even fleeting thoughts and feelings can leave lasting marks on your brain, much like a spring shower can leave little trails on a hillside.
For example, taxi drivers in London—whose job requires remembering lots of twisty streets—develop a larger hippocampus (a key brain region for making visual-spatial memories), since that part of the brain gets an extra workout (Maguire et al. 2000). As you become a happier person, the left frontal region of your brain becomes more active (Davidson 2004). {pg.5}
Because of the ways your brain changes its structure, your experience matters beyond its momentary subjective impact. It makes enduring changes in the physical tissues of your brain which affect your well-being, functioning and relationships. Based on science, this is a fundamental reason for being kind to yourself, cultivating wholesome experiences and taking them in.
What It’s Like to Be You
Much as the body is built from the foods you eat, your mind is built from the experiences you have. The flow of experiences gradually sculpts your brain, thus shaping your mind. Some of the results can be explicitly recalled: This is what I did last summer; this is how I felt when I was in love. But most of the shaping of your mind remains forever unconscious. This is called implicit memory, and it includes your expectations, models of relationships, emotional tendencies and general outlook. Implicit memory establishes the interior landscape of your mind—what it feels like to be you—based on the slowly accumulating residues of lived experience.
Take in the Good
Focusing on what is wholesome and then taking it in naturally increases the positive emotions flowing through your mind each day. Emotions have global effects since they organize the brain as a whole. Consequently, positive feelings have far-reaching benefits, including a stronger immune system (Frederickson 2000-2001) and a cardiovascular system that is less reactive to stress (Frederickson and Levenson). They lift up your mood; increase optimism, resilience, and resourcefulness; and help counteract the effects of painful experiences including trauma. It’s a positive cycle: good feelings today increase the likelihood of good feelings tomorrow.
These benefits apply to children as well. If children are part of your life, encourage them to pause for a moment at the end of the day…
First & Second Darts
Some physical and mental discomforts are unavoidable. These are the “first darts” of life.
First darts are unpleasant to be sure. But then we add our reactions to them. These reactions are "second darts"--the ones we throw ourselves. Most of our suffering comes from second darts.
Second darts often trigger more second darts through associative neural networks.
As the saying goes, pain is inevitable but suffering is optional. If you can simply stay present with whatever is arising in awareness—whether it’s a first dart or second one—without reacting further, then you will break the chain of suffering.
The Equanimous Brain
With equanimity, you see into the transient and imperfect nature of experience. Your aim is to remain disenchanted--free of the spells cast by pleasure and pain.
You are not dissatisfied with life; you simply see through its apparent charms and alarms and are not knocked off center by either.
Understanding and intention are both grounded in the prefrontal cortex (PFC).
“I am larger, better than I thought, I did not know I held so much goodness.”
