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

In the simulator, upsetting events from the past play again and again, which unfortunately strengthens the neural associations between an event and its painful feelings.

Some refuges are ineffable, though potentially more profound: confidence in the power of reason, feeling connected with nature, or a basic intuition of the fundamental alrightness of all things.

Parasympathetic activation is the normal resting state of your body, brain, and mind.

Separate what is actually connected, in order to create a boundary between itself and the world Stabilize what keeps changing, in order to maintain its internal systems within tight ranges Hold onto fleeting pleasures and escape inevitable pains, in order to approach opportunities and avoid threats

As you can see, your brain has a built-in “negativity bias” (Vaish, Grossman, and Woodward 2008) that primes you for avoidance. 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-a

Negative experiences create vicious cycles by making you pessimistic, overreactive, and inclined to go negative yourself.

Every time you calm the ANS through stimulating the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS), you tilt your body, brain, and mind increasingly toward inner peace and well-being.

Painful experiences are often best healed by positive ones that are their opposite—for example, replacing childhood feelings of being weak with a current sense of strength.

Your brain is like Velcro for negative experiences and Teflon for positive ones—even though most of your experiences are probably neutral or positive.