Each day you face the highs and lows of your own state of mind, as well as the onslaught of external threats from terrorist alerts, earthquake warnings, and economic downturns. Your mind is in a constant state of arousal, and your happiness and your physical health pay the price. But Dr. Rick Hanson says that you have enormous power not only to change your frame of mind, but to physically alter your body and even the structure of your brain by taking charge of your thoughts.
Tiger Woods says his faith will be an important part of his recovery. From Kate Hudson to Keanu Reeves to Orlando Bloom, VIEW OUR GALLERY of Hollywood's Buddha-ful People.
He's said to be a Buddhist; I don't think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith.
The brain physiology associated with spiritual states has been fertile ground for researchers and writers alike. Neuropsychologist andmeditation teacher Hanson suggests that an understanding of the brain in conjunction with 2,500-year-old Buddhist teachings can help readers achieve more happiness. He explains how the brain evolved to keep humans safe from external threats; the resulting built-in negativity bias creates suffering in modern individuals. Citing psychologist Donald Hebb's conclusion that when neurons fire together, they wire together, Hanson argues that the brain's functioning can be affected by simple practices and meditation to foster well-being.
Both the Chinese and the Tibetan exiles are bracing for an almost inevitable outcome: the emergence into the world of dueling Dalai Lamas — one chosen by the exiles, perhaps by the 14th Dalai Lama himself, and the other by Chinese officials.
"The usefulness of this book lies in Trungpa's uncanny ability to cut right to the heart of the matter and presents his understanding of Buddhism and the way of life it teaches in a manner that is applicable to his students' living situation."
Jaimal Yogis is an award-winning journalist and photographer who spends a good deal of his spare time surfing and traveling the globe. He recently finished his first book, a memoir of surf travels called Saltwater Buddha (out May, 2009) and lives on San Francisco’s Ocean Beach with his girlfriend Siri.
Fed up with suburban teenage life, Jaimal Yogis ran off to Hawaii with little more than a copy of Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha and enough cash for a surfboard. His journey is a coming-of-age saga that takes him from communes to monasteries and the icy New York shore. Equal parts spiritual memoir and surfer's tale, this is a chronicle of finding meditative focus in the barrel of a wave and eternal truth in the great salty blue.
Everyone dreams of a better life. All the things you’ve ever wanted — happiness, loving relationships, well-being, abundance, and peace of mind — are qualities of enlightenment, a way of embracing our fullest potential that seemed unavailable, until now.
Tibetan Buddhists believe in reincarnation, although not in the sense of an irreducible self passing from body to body. They describe a dying candle lighting a new one; one’s essence passes on.
There are other forms of dualism as well. David Chalmers, a philosopher of consciousness, holds what he calls naturalistic dualism - that the brain causes mind but consciousness cannot be reduced to brain function. There therefore must be some higher-order (but still entirely naturalistic) process going on. This view is opposed by other philosophers, like Daniel Dennett, who believe no such higher order process need be invoked. Consciousness can be understood as an emergent property of brain function (the position I find most compelling).
Spirit Rock Meditation Center is dedicated to the teachings of the Buddha as presented in the vipassana tradition. The practice of mindful awareness, called Insight or Vipassana Meditation, is at the heart of all the activities at Spirit Rock. The Center hosts a full program of ongoing classes, daylong programs, and residential retreats.
Author, psychologist and pioneering Buddhist teacher Kornfield writes his best book yet (and his previous ones were pretty good). His newest uses the same sweet narrative voice, provides convincing and illustrative anecdotes and stories, and reaches into world traditions and literature as well as contemporary scientific research. This book offers a systematic and well-organized view of Buddhist psychology, complete with occasional diagrams.
It doesn't take long to get acquainted with the rhythm of things at a new Buddhist shrine in this high desert community presided over by a monk nicknamed "Tom" and a 24-foot-tall statue of a saint said to have miraculous powers.
In this memoir of a musical prodigy’s avatar as a Buddhist monk, Nikolai Grozni, the author of three novels published in his native Bulgaria, dwells on the “overriding, blissfully benumbing feeling of resignation to the moment” that keeps him in the Indian town of Dharamsala.
