Buddha’s Brain by Rick Hanson summary

Introduction and Brain Structure

Buddha'S Brain by Rick Hanson What's in it for me? Improve your quality of life by learning to control your emotions and thoughts. After reading this summary, you'll be happier. You'll gain better control over your thoughts, desires and emotions, which will allow you to become a more positive person.

Stop exacerbating misfortunes. While it's inevitable you'll encounter some pain and suffering in life, you'll no longer make it worse by dwelling on it. Become a more compassionate and loving person. You'll develop more empathy toward others and consequently form deeper, more trusting relationships with them.

Chapter one. Our minds can change the structure of our brains and influence the way we feel. At any given time, what we feel is the result of the brain and mind interacting with each other. But what exactly distinguishes the brain from the mind?

Our minds are our mental processes our thoughts, wishes and feelings. In contrast, the brain is a highly complex bundle of synapses. So, while the mind is intangible, the brain is physical. For instance, the brain contains chemicals called neurotransmitters that cause us to feel certain emotions, such as happiness.

However, our conscious experience is the result of a close interaction between brain and mind. In other words, they form an integrated system. For example, the neurotransmitter dopamine can make us feel excited and energized sometimes uncomfortably so. Let's say that you get a promotion at work, and that your brain responds by releasing lots of dopamine.

Whether this will cause you to feel happy or anxious depends on your mind, whose job it is to interpret this flood of dopamine. But the mind's power doesn't end there, it can also alter the brain's physical structure. Whenever you experience or feel something, this causes neurons to interact or fire with each other. Over time, these neurons physically change as enduring physical connections are created between them.

This is known as Hebb's Rule, which is neatly expressed in the phrase, neurons that fire together, wire together. An example of this process is the simple act of laughing with friends. Doing this will establish new links in the brain between the neurons responsible for your memory of that moment and those triggering feelings of joy proof that our mental processes can alter the structure of our brains. Here's another example.

London cab drivers need to memorize complex street maps and routes. Because of this, they develop a larger than average hippocampus the key area of the brain activated when memorizing and then recalling how to reach a certain location. In other words, their experiences alter their brains.

Self-Reflection Benefits

By engaging in self reflection we can lead happier, more fulfilling lives. Many of us often feel like victims of our circumstances, and that our unhappiness and dissatisfaction with life is a foregone conclusion. What we don't realize is that if we actively reflected on these mental processes, this self reflection would lead to a happier, more prosperous life.

Self reflection is the active endeavor of trying to understand our mental processes to gain better control over them processes such as the emotions, thoughts and wishes that we experience daily. A good example of self reflection is thinking about what makes us happy. As you'll recall, mental processes can change our brain's structure, so positive self reflection will result in positive structural changes in our brains. For instance, more than two thousand five hundred years ago, a young man named Siddhartha later called Buddha reflected deeply on the sources of both his happiness and suffering.

By doing this, he was able to embrace happiness and free himself from suffering a psychological transformation which, he believed, was accomplished by focusing on the positive aspects of his life. Since the brain develops and adapts to whatever it focuses on, if we focus on the positive, we teach the brain to take in good experiences and incorporate them into our lives. Of course, some people are convinced that being self reflective means being self indulgent. But this is not the case.

By actively reflecting on our lives, we enable ourselves to become better people, for both our own sakes and those of the people around us. If you pursue a path of self improvement you'll see wholesome changes to your personality and life, which will make you a more friendly and good humored person. For instance, if you develop a more positive outlook on life, your stress levels will diminish, which in turn will improve your interpersonal relationships. Just imagine, for example, how much your relationship with your significant other would improve if you weren't always fretting about your future.

So, how exactly do we do that? As the following chapters will show, it isn't impossible to become a happier person who is free from suffering.