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.

The effort to maintain separations is at odds with the myriad ways you’re actually connected with the world and dependent upon it. As a result, you may feel subtly isolated, alienated, overwhelmed, or as if you’re in a struggle with the world.

Ultimately, happiness comes down to choosing between the discomfort of becoming aware of your mental afflictions and the discomfort of being ruled by them. —Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

You can activate the PNS in many ways, including relaxation, big exhalations, touching the lips, mindfulness of the body, imagery, balancing your heartbeat, and meditation.

example, take five breaths, inhaling and exhaling a little more fully than usual. This is both energizing and relaxing, activating first the sympathetic system and then the parasympathetic one, back and forth, in a gentle rhythm. Notice how you feel when you’re done. That combination of aliveness and centeredness is the essence of the peak performa

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

Most fears are exaggerated. As you go through life, your brain acquires expectations based on your experiences, particularly negative ones. When situations occur that are even remotely similar, your brain automatically applies its expectations to them; if it expects pain or loss, or even just the threat of these, it pulses fear signals. But because

So sense down into the youngest, most vulnerable, most emotionally charged layers of your mind, and feel around for the tip of the root of whatever is bothering you. With a little practice and self-understanding, you’ll develop a short list of “usual suspects”—the deep sources of your recurring upsets—and you’ll start routinely considering them if

each of us lives in a virtual reality that’s close enough to the real thing that we don’t bump into the furniture.

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.