Name: Buddha's brain
ISBN: 9780369323675

Buddha's brain

Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and other great teachers were born with brains built essentially like anyone else's. Then they used their minds to change their brains in ways that changed history. With the new breakthroughs in neuroscience, combined with the insights from thousands of years of contemplative practice, you, too, can shape your own brain for greater happiness, love, and wisdom. Buddha's Brainjoins the forces of modern science with ancient teachings to show readers how to have greater emotional balance in turbulent times, as well as healthier relationships, more effective actions, and a deeper religious or spiritual practice. Well-referenced and grounded in science, the book is full of practical tools and skills readers can use in daily life to tap the unused potential of the brain-and rewire it over time for greater peace and well-being. If you can change your brain, you can change your life.

What Hacker News says

jointpdfJan 2020

I have a couple of books that are something between self-help and neuroscience/psychology that I can recommend. They are a more scientific and evidence-based lens on many of the same themes as self-help books (resilience, confidence, acceptance, etc), and they contain concrete exercises and summaries. They might appeal to people who are allergic to woo:

- Buddha’s Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, Wisdom

- Bouncing Back: Rewiring Your Brain for Maximum Resilience and Well-being

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wjyOct 2012

There's a book called Buddha's Brain that documents several studies of people meditating while being scanned by an fMRI machine. It's quite fascinating. Regular meditation alters connections in the brain, similar to how working out a muscle changes the muscle.

I was on the fence on whether claimed effects of meditation were real, and reading this book clinched it for me. It anchored the claims I'd read elsewhere in something I actually believe - fMRI scans of brain activity.

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itmagNov 2011

I am a self-help junky, and I am trying to get started with meditation currently.

Here's a bunch of meditations I found, from the author of "Buddha's Brain": https://sites.google.com/site/psychospiritualtools/

His web site: http://www.wisebrain.org/

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zackattackJul 2010

This is very interesting to me. I have signed up for the free 10-day Vipassana course (dhamma.org).

Some of you may find this blog entry I wrote to be interesting. It is a review of Buddha's Brain: the practical neuroscience of happiness, love & wisdom.

http://www.zacharyburt.com/2010/05/the-neuroscience-of-buddh...

I am currently reading The Myth of Freedom by Trungpa. He's definitely assaulted my practice of spiritual materialism.

I am confused about one thing. Trugpa asserts that the benefit to meditation is boredom. Csikszentmihalyi, in Flow, asserts that meditation is beneficial because it is the practice of such a well-honed skill (practitioners become skilled at observing the intricacies of their breath and therefore experience a feeling of being "in the zone", which is basically the opposite of boredom).

Trugpa says that observing the breath is just a useful beginner's crutch.

What do you think? Estragon, would you please chime in?

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