Anything less than a contemplative perspective on life is an almost certain program for unhappiness. Figure 1: The Intersection of the Three Disciplines The discoveries being made at that intersection are only just starting to show their promise, but scientists, clinicians, and contemplatives have already learned a great deal about the brain states that underlie wholesome mental states and how to activate those brain states.
These important discoveries give you a great ability to influence your own mind. You can use that ability to reduce any distress or dysfunction, increase well-being, and support spiritual practice; these are the central activities of what could be called the path of awakening, and our aim is to use brain science to help you travel far and well upon it.
The history of science is rich in the example of the fruitfulness of bringing two sets of techniques, two sets of ideas, developed in separate contexts for the pursuit of new truth, into touch with one another.
Robert Oppenheimer The Awakening Brain Richard and I both believe that something transcendental is involved with the mind, consciousness, and the path of awakening—call it God, Spirit, Buddha- nature, the Ground, or by no name at all. Since it cannot be proven one way or another, it is important —and consistent with the spirit of science—to respect it as a possibility.
That said, more and more studies are showing how greatly the mind depends on the brain. For example, as the brain develops in childhood, so does the mind; if the brain is ever damaged, so is the mind. Subtle shifts in brain chemistry will alter mood, concentration, and memory Meyer and Quenzer Even some spiritual experiences correlate with neural activities Vaitl et al. Any aspect of the mind that is not transcendental must rely upon the physical processes of the brain.
Mental activity, whether conscious or unconscious, maps to neural activity, much like a picture of a sunset on your computer screen maps to a pattern of magnetic charges on your hard drive. Of course, no one yet knows exactly how the brain makes the mind, or how—as Dan Siegel puts it—the mind uses the brain to make the mind. What is the grand unified theory that integrates quantum mechanics and general relativity? And what is the relationship between the mind and the brain, especially regarding conscious experience?
The last question is up there with the other two because it is as difficult to answer, and as important. To use an analogy, after Copernicus, most educated people accepted that the earth revolved around the sun. But no one knew how that actually happened. Roughly years later, Isaac Newton developed the laws of gravity, which began to explain how the earth went about the sun.
It could be years, and maybe longer, before we completely understand the relationship between the brain and the mind. But meanwhile, a reasonable working hypothesis is that the mind is what the brain does. Therefore, an awakening mind means an awakening brain. Throughout history, unsung men and women and great teachers alike have cultivated remarkable mental states by generating remarkable brain states.
For instance, when experienced Tibetan practitioners go deep into meditation, they produce uncommonly powerful and pervasive gamma brainwaves of electrical activity, in which unusually large regions of neural real estate pulse in synchrony 30— 80 times a second Lutz et al. So, with a deep bow to the transcendental, we will stay within the frame of Western science and see what modern neuropsychology, informed by contemplative practice, offers in the way of effective methods for experiencing greater happiness, love, and wisdom.
To be sure: these methods will not replace traditional spiritual practices. The Causes of Suffering Although life has many pleasures and joys, it also contains considerable discomfort and sorrow—the unfortunate side effect of three strategies that evolved to help animals, including us, pass on their genes. To summarize, whenever a strategy runs into trouble, uncomfortable—sometimes even agonizing—alarm signals pulse through the nervous system to set the animal back on track.
But our vastly more developed brain is fertile ground for a harvest of suffering. Only we humans worry about the future, regret the past, and blame ourselves for the present. We suffer that we suffer. We get upset about being in pain, angry about dying, sad about waking up sad yet another day. This kind of suffering—which encompasses most of our unhappiness and dissatisfaction—is constructed by the brain. It is made up. Which is ironic, poignant—and supremely hopeful.
For if the brain is the cause of suffering, it can also be its cure. Virtue, Mindfulness, and Wisdom More than two thousand years ago, a young man named Siddhartha—not yet enlightened, not yet called the Buddha—spent many years training his mind and thus his brain. On the night of his awakening, he looked deep inside his mind which reflected and revealed the underlying activities of his brain and saw there both the causes of suffering and the path to freedom from suffering.
Then, for forty years, he wandered northern India, teaching all who would listen how to: Cool the fires of greed and hatred to live with integrity Steady and concentrate the mind to see through its confusions Develop liberating insight In short, he taught virtue, mindfulness also called concentration , and wisdom.
These are the three pillars of Buddhist practice, as well as the wellsprings of everyday well-being, psychological growth, and spiritual realization. Virtue simply involves regulating your actions, words, and thoughts to create benefits rather than harms for yourself and others. Virtue also relies on bottom-up calming from the parasympathetic nervous system and positive emotions from the limbic system. Mindfulness involves the skillful use of attention to both your inner and outer worlds.
Wisdom is applied common sense, which you acquire in two steps. First, you come to understand what hurts and what helps—in other words, the causes of suffering and the path to its end the focus of chapters 2 and 3. Then, based on this understanding, you let go of those things that hurt and strengthen those that help chapters 6 and 7.
Finally, chapter 13 addresses what is perhaps the most seductive and subtle challenge to wisdom: the sense of being a self who is separate from and vulnerable to the world. Regulation, Learning, and Selection Virtue, mindfulness, and wisdom are supported by the three fundamental functions of the brain: regulation, learning, and selection. Your brain regulates itself— and other bodily systems—through a combination of excitatory and inhibitory activity: green lights and red lights.
It learns through forming new circuits and strengthening or weakening existing ones. And it selects whatever experience has taught it to value; for example, even an earthworm can be trained to pick a particular path to avoid an electric shock. These three functions—regulation, learning, and selection—operate at all levels of the nervous system, from the intricate molecular dance at the tip of a synapse to the whole-brain integration of control, competence, and discernment.
All three functions are involved in any important mental activity. Nonetheless, each pillar of practice corresponds quite closely to one of the three fundamental neural functions. Virtue relies heavily on regulation, both to excite positive inclinations and to inhibit negative ones.
Mindfulness leads to new learning—since attention shapes neural circuits—and draws upon past learning to develop a steadier and more concentrated awareness. Wisdom is a matter of making choices, such as letting go of lesser pleasures for the sake of greater ones. Consequently, developing virtue, mindfulness, and wisdom in your mind depends on improving regulation, learning, and selection in your brain. Inclining the Mind When you set out on the path of awakening, you begin wherever you are.
Then—with time, effort, and skillful means—virtue, mindfulness, and wisdom gradually strengthen and you feel happier and more loving. Some traditions describe this process as an uncovering of the true nature that was always present; others frame it as a transformation of your mind and body. Of course, these two aspects of the path of awakening support each other. On the one hand, your true nature is both a refuge and a resource for the sometimes difficult work of psychological growth and spiritual practice.
Although your true nature may be hidden momentarily by stress and worry, anger and unfulfilled longings, it still continues to exist. Knowing this can be a great comfort.
Paradoxically, it takes time to become what we already are. In either case, these changes in the mind—uncovering inherent purity and cultivating wholesome qualities—reflect changes in the brain. By understanding better how the brain works and changes—how it gets emotionally hijacked or settles into calm virtue; how it creates distractibility or fosters mindful attention; how it makes harmful choices or wise ones—you can take more control of your brain, and therefore your mind.
This will make your development of greater well-being, lovingness, and insight easier and more fruitful, and help you go as far as you possibly can on your own path of awakening. Well, who is the one person in the world you have the greatest power over? You hold that life in your hands, and what it will be depends on how you care for it. One of the central experiences of my life occurred one evening around Thanksgiving, when I was about six years old.
I remember standing across the street from our house, on the edge of cornfields in Illinois, seeing ruts in the dark soil filled with water from a recent rain.
On the distant hills, tiny lights twinkled. I felt quiet and clear inside, and sad about the unhappiness that night in my home. Then it came to me very powerfully: it was up to me, and no one else, to find my way over time toward those faraway lights and the possibility of happiness they represented. But you can tend to the causes of a better future. To use examples from later in this book, you could take a very full inhalation in a tense meeting to force a long exhalation, thus activating the calming parasympathetic nervous system PNS.
Or, when remembering an upsetting experience, recall the feeling of being with someone who loves you—which will gradually infuse the upsetting memory with a positive feeling.
Or, to steady the mind, deliberately prolong feelings of happiness as this will increase levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine, which will help your attention stay focused. These little actions really add up over time. Every day, ordinary activities—as well as any personal growth or spiritual practices—contain dozens of opportunities to change your brain from the inside out.
You really do have that power, which is a wonderful thing in a world full of forces beyond your control. But to take these steps, you have to be on your own side. That may not be so easy at first; most people bring less kindness to themselves than to others.
To get on your own side, it can be helpful to make a convincing case for tending to the causes that will change your brain for the better. For example, please consider these facts: You were once a young child, just as worthy of care as any other. Can you see yourself as a child?
The same is true today: you are a human being like any other—and just as deserving of happiness, love, and wisdom. Progressing along your path of awakening will make you more effective in your work and relationships. Think about the many ways that others will benefit from you being more good-humored, warm-hearted, and savvy. The World on the Edge of a Sword Perhaps most important of all, consider the ripples spreading out from your own growth, imperceptibly but genuinely helping a world full of greed, confusion, fear, and anger.
Our world is poised on the edge of a sword, and it could tip either way. On the other hand, the world is getting hotter, military technologies are increasingly lethal, and a billion people go to sleep hungry every night. The tragedy and the opportunity of this moment in history are exactly the same: the natural and technical resources needed to pull us back from the brink already exist.
The issue is not a lack of resources. As you and other people become increasingly skillful with the mind—and thus the brain—that could help tip our world in a better direction. And what happens in your brain changes your mind, since the brain and mind are a single, integrated system. Therefore, you can use your mind to change your brain to benefit your mind—and everyone else whose life you touch. The brain evolved to help you survive, but its three primary survival strategies also make you suffer.
Virtue, mindfulness, and wisdom are the pillars of everyday well-being, personal growth, and spiritual practice; they draw on the three fundamental neural functions of regulation, learning, and selection.
Small positive actions every day will add up to large changes over time, as you gradually build new neural structures. To keep at it, you need to be on your own side. Wholesome changes in the brains of many people could help tip the world in a better direction. Look at the faces around you—they probably hold a fair amount of strain, disappointment, and worry.
And you know your own frustrations and sorrows as well. The pangs of living range from subtle loneliness and dismay, to moderate stress, hurt, and anger, and then to intense trauma and anguish.
This whole range is what we mean by the word, suffering. A lot of suffering is mild but chronic, such as a background sense of anxiety, irritability, or lack of fulfillment.
And in its place, more contentment, love, and peace. To make any problem better, you need to understand its causes. For example, in his Four Noble Truths, the Buddha identified an ailment suffering , diagnosed its cause craving: a compelling sense of need for something , specified its cure freedom from craving , and prescribed a treatment the Eightfold Path.
This chapter examines suffering in light of evolution in order to diagnose its sources in your brain. When you understand why you feel nervous, annoyed, hassled, driven, blue, or inadequate, those feelings have less power over you. This by itself can bring some relief. The Evolving Brain Life began around 3. Multicelled creatures first appeared about million years ago. When you get a cold, remember that microbes had nearly a three-billion-year head-start!
By the time the earliest jellyfish arose about million years ago, animals had grown complex enough that their sensory and motor systems needed to communicate with each other; thus the beginnings of neural tissue.
As animals evolved, so did their nervous systems, which slowly developed a central headquarters in the form of a brain. Evolution builds on preexisting capabilities. Cortical tissues that are relatively recent, complex, conceptualizing, slow, and motivationally diffuse sit atop subcortical and brain-stem structures that are ancient, simplistic, concrete, fast, and motivationally intense.
As we evolved, the left hemisphere in most people came to focus on sequential and linguistic processing while the right hemisphere specialized in holistic and visual-spatial processing; of course, the two halves of your brain work closely together. Many neural structures are duplicated so that there is one in each hemisphere; nonetheless, the usual convention is to refer to a structure in the singular e.
To motivate animals, including ourselves, to follow these strategies and pass on their genes, neural networks evolved to create pain and distress under certain conditions: when separations break down, stability is shaken, opportunities disappoint, and threats loom. Unfortunately, these conditions happen all the time, because: Everything is connected. Everything keeps changing. Opportunities routinely remain unfulfilled or lose their luster, and many threats are inescapable e.
For most people, the left lobe establishes that the body is distinct from the world, and the right lobe indicates where the body is compared to features in its environment.
The result is an automatic, underlying assumption along the lines of I am separate and independent. Although this is true in some ways, in many important ways it is not.
Not So Distinct To live, an organism must metabolize: it must exchange matter and energy with its environment. Consequently, over the course of a year, many of the atoms in your body are replaced by new ones. The energy you use to get a drink of water comes from sunshine working its way up to you through the food chain—in a real sense, light lifts the cup to your lips. The apparent wall between your body and the world is more like a picket fence. Language and culture enter and pattern your mind from the moment of birth Han and Northoff Empathy and love naturally attune you to other people, so your mind moves into resonance with theirs Siegel These flows of mental activity go both ways as you influence others.
Within your mind, there are hardly any lines at all. All its contents flow into each other, sensations becoming thoughts feelings desires actions and more sensations. This stream of consciousness correlates with a cascade of fleeting neural assemblies, each assembly dispersing into the next one, often in less than a second Dehaene, Sergent, and Changeux ; Thompson and Varela Of course, there are ten thousand reasons why anyone is here today.
How far back should we go? My son—born with his umbilical cord wrapped around his neck—is here due to medical technologies developed over hundreds of years. Or we could go way back: Most of the atoms in your body—including the oxygen in your lungs and the iron in your blood—were born inside a star.
Stars are giant fusion reactors that pound together hydrogen atoms, making heavier elements and releasing lots of energy in the process. The ones that went nova spewed their contents far and wide. By the time our solar system started to form, roughly nine billion years after the universe began, enough large atoms existed to make our planet, to make the hands that hold this book and the brain that understands these words.
Your body is made of stardust. Your mind also depends on countless preceding causes. Think of the life events and people that have shaped your views, personality, and emotions.
Imagine having been switched at birth and raised by poor shopkeepers in Kenya or a wealthy oil family in Texas; how different would your mind be today? The Suffering of Separation Since we are each connected and interdependent with the world, our attempts to be separate and independent are regularly frustrated, which produces painful signals of disturbance and threat.
Further, even when our efforts are temporarily successful, they still lead to suffering. Not So Permanent Your body, brain, and mind contain vast numbers of systems that must maintain a healthy equilibrium. The problem, though, is that changing conditions continually disturb these systems, resulting in signals of threat, pain, and distress—in a word, suffering.
This tiny neuron is both part of the nervous system and a complex system in its own right that requires multiple subsystems to keep it running. When it fires, tendrils at the end of its axon expel a burst of molecules into the synapses—the connections—it makes with other neurons.
Each tendril contains about two hundred little bubbles called vesicles that are full of the neurotransmitter serotonin Robinson Every time the neuron fires, five to ten vesicles spill open. Since a typical neuron fires around ten times a second, the serotonin vesicles of each tendril are emptied out every few seconds. Consequently, busy little molecular machines must either manufacture new serotonin or recycle loose serotonin floating around the neuron. Then they need to build vesicles, fill them with serotonin, and move them close to where the action is, at the tip of each tendril.
A Typical Neuron Neurons are the basic building blocks of the nervous system; their main function is to communicate with each other across tiny junctions called synapses. While there are many sorts of neurons, their basic design is pretty similar. The cell body sends out spikes called dendrites which receive neurotransmitters from other neurons. Some neurons communicate directly with each other through electrical impulses.
Simplifying some, the millisecond-by-millisecond sum of all the excitatory and inhibitory signals a neuron receives determines whether or not it will fire.
When a neuron fires, an electrochemical wave ripples down its axon, the fiber extending toward the neurons it sends signals to. This releases neurotransmitters into its synapses with receiving neurons, either inhibiting them or exciting them to fire in turn.
Nerve signals are sped up by myelin, a fatty substance that insulates axons. Figure 1: A Simplified Neuron The gray matter of your brain is composed largely of the cell bodies of neurons. There is also white matter, made up of the axons and the glial cells; glial cells perform metabolic support functions such as wrapping axons in myelin and recycling neurotransmitters.
Figure 4: A Synapse magnified in the inset The Challenges of Maintaining an Equilibrium For you to stay healthy, each system in your body and mind must balance two conflicting needs.
On the one hand, it must remain open to inputs during ongoing transactions with its local environment Thompson ; closed systems are dead systems. On the other hand, each system must also preserve a fundamental stability, staying centered around a good set-point and within certain ranges—not too hot, nor too cold. For example, inhibition from the prefrontal cortex PFC and arousal from the limbic system must balance each other: too much inhibition and you feel numb inside, too much arousal and you feel overwhelmed.
Signals of Threat To keep each of your systems in balance, sensors register its state as the thermometer does inside a thermostat and send signals to regulators to restore equilibrium if the system gets out of range i. Most of this regulation stays out of your awareness. But some signals for corrective action are so important that they bubble up into consciousness.
These consciously experienced signals are unpleasant, in part because they carry a sense of threat—a call to restore equilibrium before things slide too far too fast down the slippery slope. The call may come softly, with a sense of unease, or loudly, with alarm, even panic.
However it comes, it mobilizes your brain to do whatever it takes to get you back in balance. This mobilization usually comes with feelings ofcraving; these range from quiet longings to a desperate sense of compulsion. It is interesting that the word for craving in Pali—the language of early Buddhism—is tanha, the root of which means thirst.
You want them to stop. Everything Keeps Changing Occasionally, threat signals do stop for a while—just as long as every system stays in balance. But since the world is always changing, there are endless disturbances in the equilibria of your body, mind, and relationships.
The regulators of the systems of your life, from the molecular bottom all the way up to the interpersonal top, must keep trying to impose static order on inherently unstable processes. Consider the impermanence of the physical world, from the volatility of quantum particles to our own Sun, which will someday swell into a red giant and swallow the Earth.
Or consider the turbulence of your nervous system; for example, regions in the PFC that support consciousness are updated five to eight times a second Cunningham and Zelazo This neurological instability underlies all states of mind. For example, every thought involves a momentary partitioning of streaming neural traffic into a coherent assembly of synapses that must soon disperse into fertile disorder to allow other thoughts to emerge Atmanspacher and Graben Observe even a single breath, and you will experience its sensations changing, dispersing, and disappearing soon after they arise.
Everything changes. But to help you survive, your brain keeps trying to stop the river, struggling to hold dynamic systems in place, to find fixed patterns in this variable world, and to construct permanent plans for changing conditions.
Consequently, your brain is forever chasing after the moment that has just passed, trying to understand and control it. But the brain is forever clutching at what has just surged by. Not So Pleasant or Painful In order to pass on their genes, our animal ancestors had to choose correctly many times a day whether to approach something or avoid it.
Today, humans approach and avoid mental states as well as physical objects; for example, we pursue self-worth and push away shame. Nonetheless, for all its sophistication, human approaching and avoiding draws on much the same neural circuitry used by a monkey to look for bananas or a lizard to hide under a rock. The Feeling Tone of Experience How does your brain decide if something should be approached or avoided?
To simplify a complex process, during the first few tenths of a second, light bouncing off this curved object is sent to the occipital cortex which handles visual information for processing into a meaningful image see figure 5. Then the occipital cortex sends representations of this image in two directions: to the hippocampus, for evaluation as a potential threat or opportunity, and to the PFC and other parts of the brain for more sophisticated—and time-consuming—analysis.
Figure 5: You See a Potential Threat or Opportunity Just in case, your hippocampus immediately compares the image to its short list of jump-first-think-later dangers. Meanwhile, the powerful but relatively slow PFC has been pulling information out of long-term memory to figure out whether the darn thing is a snake or a stick.
Throughout this episode, everything you experienced was either pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. At first there were neutral or pleasant sights as you strolled along the path, then unpleasant fear at a potential snake, and finally pleasant relief at the realization that it was just a stick.
That aspect of experience—whether it is pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral—is called, in Buddhism, its feeling tone or, in Western psychology, its hedonic tone. The feeling tone is produced mainly by your amygdala LeDoux and then broadcast widely. Primary Neurotransmitters Glutamate—excites receiving neurons. GABA—inhibits receiving neurons. Neuromodulators These substances—sometimes also called neurotransmitters—influence the primary neurotransmitters. Serotonin—regulates mood, sleep, and digestion; most antidepressants aim at increasing its effects.
Dopamine—involved with rewards and attention; promotes approach behaviors. Norepinephrine—alerts and arouses. Acetylcholine—promotes wakefulness and learning.
Neuropeptides These neuromodulators are built from peptides, a particular kind of organic molecule. Opioids—buffer stress, provide soothing and reduce pain, and produce pleasure e. Oxytocin—promotes nurturing behaviors toward children and bonding in couples; associated with blissful closeness and love; women have more oxytocin than men. Vasopressin—supports pair bonding; in men it may promote aggressiveness toward sexual rivals.
Other Neurochemicals Cortisol—released by the adrenal glands during the stress response; stimulates the amygdala and inhibits the hippocampus. Estrogen—the brains of both men and women contain estrogen receptors; affects libido, mood, and memory. Chasing Carrots Two major neural systems keep you chasing carrots.
The first system is based on the neurotransmitter dopamine. These neurons also rev up when you encounter something that could offer rewards in the future—such as your friend saying she wants to take you to lunch. In your mind, this neural activity produces a motivating sense of desire: you want to call her back.
When you do have lunch, a part of your brain called the cingulate cortex about the size of your finger, on the interior edge of each hemisphere tracks whether the rewards you expected—fun with your friend, good food—actually arrive Eisenberger and Lieberman If they do, dopamine levels stay steady.
Falling dopamine registers in subjective experience as an unpleasant feeling tone—a dissatisfaction and discontent—that stimulates craving broadly defined for something that will restore its levels. The second system, based on several other neuromodulators, is the biochemical source of the pleasant feeling tones that come from the actual—and anticipated— carrots in life.
Imagine a toddler trying to eat a spoonful of pudding. After many misses, his perceptual-motor neurons finally get it right, leading to waves of pleasure chemicals which help cement the synaptic connections that created the specific movements that slipped the spoon into his mouth.
In essence, this pleasure system highlights whatever triggered it, prompts you to pursue those rewards again, and strengthens the behaviors that make you successful in getting them. It works hand in hand with the dopamine-based system.
For example, slaking your thirst feels good both because the discontent of low dopamine leaves, and because the pleasure chemical— based joy of cool water on a hot day arrives. Approaching Involves Suffering These two neural systems are necessary for survival. Additionally, you can use them for positive aims that have nothing to do with passing on genes.
For example, you could increase your motivation to keep doing something healthy e. When you do fulfill a desire, the rewards that follow are often not that great. Was the satisfaction of the good job review that intense or long lasting?
When rewards are in fact pretty great, many of them still come at a stiff price—big desserts are an obvious example. Also consider the rewards of gaining recognition, winning an argument, or getting others to act a particular way. Even the best ones of all.
You are routinely separated from things you enjoy. And someday that separation will be permanent. Friends drift away, children leave home, careers end, and eventually your own final breath comes and goes. Everything that begins must also cease. Everything that comes together must also disperse. Experiences are thus incapable of being completely satisfying. They are an unreliable basis for true happiness. But actually, sticks are usually more powerful, since your brain is built more for avoiding than for approaching.
For example, imagine our mammalian ancestors dodging dinosaurs in a worldwide Jurassic Park 70 million years ago. Constantly looking over their shoulders, alert to the slightest crackle of brush, ready to freeze or bolt or attack depending on the situation. The quick and the dead. If they missed out on a carrot—a chance at food or mating, perhaps—they usually had other opportunities later.
The ones that lived to pass on their genes paid a lot of attention to negative experiences. This basic awareness is often accompanied by a background feeling of anxiety that keeps you vigilant. Try walking through a store for a few minutes without the least whiff of caution, unease, or tension. This makes sense because our mammalian, primate, and human ancestors were prey as well as predators. In addition, most primate social groups have been full of aggression from males and females alike Sapolsky And in the hominid and then human hunter-gatherer bands of the past couple million years, violence has been a leading cause of death for men Bowles We became anxious for good reason: there was a lot to fear.
Take facial expressions, a primary signal of threat or opportunity for a social animal like us: fearful faces are perceived much more rapidly than happy or neutral ones, probably fast-tracked by the amygdala Yang, Zald, and Blake In fact, even when researchers make fearful faces invisible to conscious awareness, the amygdala still lights up Jiang and He The brain is drawn to bad news. Once burned, twice shy. Your brain is like Velcro for negative experiences and Teflon for positive ones—even though most of your experiences are probably neutral or positive.
People will do more to avoid a loss than to acquire a comparable gain Baumeister et al. Compared to lottery winners, accident victims usually take longer to return to their original baseline of happiness Brickman, Coates, and Janoff-Bulman Bad information about a person carries more weight than good information Peeters and Czapinski , and in relationships, it typically takes about five positive interactions to overcome the effects of a single negative one Gottman That residue lies waiting, ready to reactivate if you ever encounter a fear-provoking event like the previous one.
This bias makes you suffer in a variety of ways. For starters, it generates an unpleasant background of anxiety, which for some people can be quite intense; anxiety also makes it harder to bring attention inward for self-awareness or contemplative practice, since the brain keeps scanning to make sure there is no problem.
The negativity bias fosters or intensifies other unpleasant emotions, such as anger, sorrow, depression, guilt, and shame.
It highlights past losses and failures, it downplays present abilities, and it exaggerates future obstacles. The weight of those judgments can really wear you down. These are strong, traditional terms that cover a broad range of thoughts, words, and deeds, including the most fleeting and subtle. Greed is a grasping after carrots, while hatred is an aversion to sticks; both involve craving more pleasure and less pain.
Virtual Reality Sometimes these poisons are conspicuous; much of the time, however, they operate in the background of your awareness, firing and wiring quietly along. Only a small fraction of the inputs to your occipital lobe comes directly from the external world; the rest comes from internal memory stores and perceptual-processing modules Raichle Inside this simulator—whose neural substrate appears to be centered in the upper-middle of your PFC Gusnard et al.
These brief clips are the building blocks of much conscious mental activity Niedenthal ; Pitcher et al. For our ancestors, running simulations of past events promoted survival, as it strengthened the learning of successful behaviors by repeating their neural firing patterns.
Simulating future events also promoted survival by enabling our ancestors to compare possible outcomes—in order to pick the best approach—and to ready potential sensory-motor sequences for immediate action. Over the past three million years, the brain has tripled in size; much of this expansion has improved the capabilities of the simulator, suggesting its benefits for survival.
Simulations Make You Suffer The brain continues to produce simulations today, even when they have nothing to do with staying alive. There you are, following a presentation at work, running an errand, or meditating, and suddenly your mind is a thousand miles away, caught up in a mini-movie. But what do you actually feel when you enact the mini-movie in real life? Is it as pleasant as promised up there on the screen? Usually not.
In reality, are the explicit and implicit beliefs in your simulations true? Sometimes yes, but often no. Mini-movies keep us stuck by their simplistic view of the past and by their defining out of existence real possibilities for the future, such as new ways to reach out to others or dream big dreams.
I wrote this book as an answer to many unanswered questions that are trending online like: Is Buddhism right? Is Buddhism a religion? Is Buddhism a science? Is Buddhism a philosophy? What are the Four Noble Truth? What is Nirvana? Is death the end of man? How can I over power rebirth? What decide the next place of my resurrection? How can one attain genuine peace, happiness and perfect enlightenment?
Are Buddhist nation's poor? How can I be a Buddhist? How can I meditate? What are the 99 quotes of Buddha? And a lot of questions. This book will serves as a hand book for self-help to both dummies and confirmed Buddhist in answering unlimited questions and know more about Buddhism?
It focuses on the execution of change processes within volatile and challenging emerging markets with high growth potential. The book first presents the organizational development and change research on which the model is based, and discusses the basic neuroscience principles. It then introduces a systematic model of the ten enablers, taking readers through the process of change, from considering the ethos prior to embarking on it, including engagement of stakeholders, up to the final phase, where change leaders exit the process or the organization.
It highlights this circular process through several step-by-step illustrations, supported by examples from emerging markets. Further, it includes neuroscience research and principles to help leaders understand and manage change in themselves and others. This well-researched and practical book is a valuable resource for students and professionals alike. The importance of absorption makes itself felt in different ways; the two studies combined in this book concentrate on two of them.
The first study, The Symbolic Mind, argues that, largely as a result of language acquisition, humans have two levels of cognition, which in normal circumstances are simultaneously active.
Absorption is a or the means to circumvent some, perhaps all, of the associations that characterize one of these two levels of cognition, resulting in what is sometimes referred to as mystical experience, but which is not confined to mysticism and plays a role in various "religious" phenomena, and elsewhere. In the second study, The Psychology of the Buddha, Prof. Bronkhorst provides a theoretical context for the observation that absorption is a source of pleasure, grapples with Freud, and illustrates his observations through translations of ancient Buddhist texts from the Pali and Sanskrit languages along with his psychological commentary.
Johannes Bronkhorst is emeritus professor of Sanskrit and Indian studies at the University of Lausanne. Read Online Download. Hot Whos in Charge? Gazzaniga by Michael S. Add a review Your Rating: Your Comment:. Whos in Charge? Douglas Fields.
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