The key ideas

Buddha's Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love & Wisdom

Rick Hanson, Richard Mendius, 2009

We remember one critical remark longer than ten kind words, and that is no accident. Neuropsychologist Rick Hanson and neurologist Richard Mendius explain why a brain built for survival clings so easily to the bad, and they bring discoveries about the brain together with Buddhist practice. The book shows how a few seconds of attention a day gradually shift the brain toward calm, kindness and clarity.

Who it is for

For anyone who notices that bad things stay stuck in their head for ages while good things fade by evening. And for anyone curious about how the brain works and what neuroscience has in common with meditation.

Only we humans worry about the future, regret the past, and blame ourselves for the present.

The taxi drivers who grew their hippocampus

London taxi drivers have to keep countless winding streets of a huge city in their heads. Scientists looked inside their brains and found that their hippocampus was enlarged. That is the part of the brain that helps you find your way around. In these drivers it simply got more exercise than in other people, and so it grew.

This story opens the idea the whole book stands on. It was written by neuropsychologist Rick Hanson and neurologist Richard Mendius. They brought two things together: discoveries about how the brain works, and Buddhist practices that contemplatives have refined for more than two thousand years. Hanson calls these people the Olympic athletes of mental training. Buddhism rests on three pillars: virtue, mindfulness and wisdom. The authors show which mechanisms in the brain each of them relies on.

The book's main rule was put into words back in 1949 by the psychologist Donald Hebb: neurons that fire together wire together. Whatever you keep resting your attention on leaves a trace in the brain, like spring rain on soft ground. So the mind can gradually change the brain, and through the brain, your life.

Ahead of you are a snake that turned out to be a stick, two arrows, children's things scattered around the house, two wolves in one heart and some forgotten milk. Each story explains why the brain clings so easily to the bad, and what you can do about it for a few seconds a day.

The snake on the path that turned out to be a stick

Hanson asks you to picture a walk in the woods. The path turns, and right at your feet lies something curved. A second later you have already jumped aside, before you've even had time to think. Only then does the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain behind your forehead that handles plans and reasoning, calmly work it out: the thing isn't moving, so it's just a stick.

That was an ancient alarm going off. The hippocampus checked the shape against a list of dangers, and the amygdala, a small structure deep in the brain, raised the alarm. Hanson describes our brain as "a lizard, a squirrel and a monkey" in one head. Beneath the newest part of the brain work layers inherited from much older animals, and they shape our reactions from the bottom up, before we have a chance to think.

Why is this system so jumpy? Hanson explains it with carrots and sticks. Every day our ancestors had to choose: reach for a carrot or dodge a stick. Miss a carrot, and there will be another one tomorrow. Miss a stick, say a predator, and there will be no more carrots ever. The most watchful survived, and we inherited their brains.

That is why a stick weighs more than a carrot in our heads. It is not a fault, and it is not a character flaw. It is a setting that once saved lives. Conditions have changed a great deal since then, but the setting has stayed the same.

Read in Livria

About the author

Rick Hanson is an American neuropsychologist and meditation teacher. Richard Mendius is a neurologist, his co-author and teaching partner. Together they founded the Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom.

All books by this author: Rick Hanson, Richard Mendius

Terms from the book

  • Prefrontal cortex
  • Hippocampus
  • Adrenaline
  • Cortisol
  • Mindfulness
  • Amygdala
  • meditation
  • Hebb
  • Neurologist
  • Gottman
  • neuropsychologist
  • Buddha
  • virtue
  • Neuron
  • Negativity bias
  • Teflon: A slippery coating put on frying pans, for example, so that nothing sticks to them.
  • Ajahn Chah: A Thai Buddhist monk, one of the best known meditation teachers of the twentieth century.
  • Three poisons: A Buddhist idea: greed, hatred and delusion, the three main sources of suffering.
  • Sympathetic nervous system: The part of the nervous system that gets the body ready to act in danger: it speeds up the heartbeat and tenses the muscles.
  • Parasympathetic nervous system: The part of the nervous system in charge of rest and digestion. It slows the heartbeat and calms the body.
  • Equanimity: In the book: a state in which you do not react to your own reactions. It is not indifference but a calm, warm presence.

All terms

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