Neurodharma
New Science, Ancient Wisdom, and Seven Practices of the Highest Happiness
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4.5 • 15 Ratings
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
LOS ANGELES TIMES BESTSELLER • “An easy-to-follow road map for creating day-to-day inner peace in today’s increasingly complex world.”—Lori Gottlieb, MFT, New York Times bestselling author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone
Throughout history, people have sought the heights of human potential—to become as wise and strong, happy and loving, as any person can ever be. And now recent science is revealing how these remarkable ways of being are based on equally remarkable changes in our own nervous system, making them more attainable than ever before.
In Neurodharma, the follow-up to his classic Buddha’s Brain, New York Times bestselling author Rick Hanson, PhD, not only explores the new neuroscience of awakening but also offers a bold yet plausible plan for reverse-engineering peak experiences, sense of oneness, and even enlightenment itself. And he does so with his trademark blend of solid science and warm encouragement, guiding you along this high-reaching path with good humor, accessible tools, and personal examples.
A groundbreaking yet practical book, Neurodharma shares seven practices for strengthening the neural circuitry of profound contentment and inner peace—qualities that offer essential support in everyday life while also supporting the exploration of the most radical reaches of human consciousness. Step by step, this book explains how to apply these insights in order to cultivate unshakable presence of mind, a courageous heart, and serenity in a changing world. The breakthroughs of the great teachers are not reserved for the chosen few. Dr. Hanson shows how we can embody them ourselves in daily life to handle stress, heal old pain, feel at ease with others, and rest in the sense of our natural goodness.
The Buddha didn’t use an MRI to become enlightened. Still, 2,500 years after he walked the dusty roads of northern India, neuroscientists are discovering the mechanisms of the brain that underpin the Buddha’s penetrating analysis of the mind. With deep research, stories, guided meditations, examples, and applications, Dr. Hanson offers a fascinating, inspiring vision of who we can be—and an effective path for fulfilling this wonderful possibility.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Psychologist Hanson (Buddha's Brain) explores the neuroscience of Buddhist psychology and meditation in this stimulating study. Drawing on scientific research about the benefits of meditation practice, Hanson presents a framework of seven practices tied to the Buddhist process of awakening: steadying the mind, warming the heart, resting in fullness, finding wholeness, receiving nowness, opening into allness, and finding timelessness. He also argues that meditation increases the brain's ability to form new habits. For example, mental anguish, he writes, is a consequence of different parts of the mind struggling against each other; meditation can rewire the brain to sit at the "emergent edge of now" before the onset of mental suffering. Though the reading suggestions on neuroscience and Buddhist works highlighted in boxes throughout seem superfluous, embedded in each chapter are wide-ranging, useful instructions related to meditative practices. This highly accessible primer on the neuroscience of Buddhist psychology and meditation will appeal to novice and expert meditators alike.
