Buddha's Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom
Buddha's Brain (Rick Hanson)
Author Dr. Rick Hanson, PhD has 4.7 out of 5 stars (with 2,067 reviews) for this book. Change our brain, change our life? This essential classic from the New York Times bestselling author Rick Hanson is celebrating 15 years in print with more than 500,000 copies sold.
Great teachers like the Buddha Gautama, the Christ Jesus, Muslim Mo, Jewish Mo, and Hinduism's Gandhi were all born with brains built essentially like anyone else’s—and then they changed their brains in ways that changed the world.
Neuroscience now reveals how the flow of thoughts actually sculpts the brain. More and more, we are learning that it’s possible to strengthen positive brain states [and traits].
By combining breakthroughs in science with insights from thousands of years of mindfulness practice, readers can also shape their own “Buddha’s Brain” for greater happiness, love, and wisdom.
Buddha’s Brain draws on evidence-based neuroscience to show how to stimulate the brain for more fulfilling relationships, a deeper spiritual life, and a greater sense of inner confidence and self-worth.
Using guided meditations and mindfulness exercises, readers will learn how to activate the brain states of calm, joy, and compassion to replace worry, sorrow, and anger.
Most importantly, readers will foster positive psychological growth that will literally change the way they live their day-to-day lives.
This book provides an essential intersection of psychology, neurology, and contemplative practice. It is filled with practical tools and skills that readers can use every day to tap into the unused potential of the brain and rewire it over time for greater well-being. More
Mount Athos [a] is "Holy Mountain" on the Athos peninsula in northeastern Greece on the Aegean Sea. It is an important center of Eastern Orthodox Christian monasticism.
Holy Mountain and most of the Athos peninsula are governed as an autonomous region in Greece by the monastic community of Mt. Athos, which is ecclesiastically under the direct jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople.
The remainder of the peninsula forms part of the Aristotelis municipality. By Greek law and by religious tradition, women are prohibited from entering the area governed by the monastic community [2].
Like Mt. Olympus, gods, angels may rest here.
Mt. Athos has been inhabited since ancient times and is known for its long Christian presence and historical monastic traditions, which date back to at least the 9th century during the Byzantine era.
Because of its long history of religious importance, the well-preserved architecture of its monasteries, and the preservation of the natural environment of the peninsula, the monastic community of Mt. Athos was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1988 [3].
NAMES: In the classical era, Mt. Athos was called Athos and the peninsula Acté (Latin) or Akté (Koine Greek Ἀκτή). In modern Greek, the mountain is Oros Athos (Greek Όρος Άθως) and the peninsula Hersonisos tou Atho (Χερσόνησος του Άθω), while the designation Agio Oros (Άγιο Όρος), translating as "Holy Mountain," is also used [4].
Some languages in the Eastern Orthodox tradition use names that translate as "Holy Mountain," including Bulgarian, Macedonian, and Serbian (Света Гора, Sveta Gora) [5] and Georgian (მთაწმინდა, mtats'minda) [6].
However, not all languages spoken in the Eastern Orthodox world use this name: In the East Slavic languages (Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian) it is simply called Афон (Afon, meaning "Athos"), while in Romanian it is called "Mount Athos" (Muntele Athos or Muntele Atos) [7]. More
(Near-Death Experiences) White American Southern man and farmer dies, which becomes a profound near-death experience for him as he meets the spirit Jesus, which reveals shocking truths about Black people. He never thought he hated them, nor did he notice his implicit biases, only "preferring to stick with his own kind."
Trump and Ashkenazi Zionist Israelis teach us the white USA is at a Turning Point (Kirks)
The Gateless Gate (Mandarin Chinese 無門關, Wúménguān, Japanese 無門関, Mumonkan), sometimes translated as The Gateless Barrier, is a collection of 48 Chan (Zen) koans ("public cases" popularly but mistakenly thought of as insoluble riddles).
It was compiled in the early 13th century by the Chinese Master Wumen Huikai (無門慧開, Japanese Mumon Ekai, 1183–1260) during the Song Dynasty.
The title has a double meaning and may also be understood as Wumen's Barrier because Wumen's name, which literally means "no gate," is the title's first two characters.
Then I knew intuitively, innately by instinct!
Wumen's preface indicates that the volume was published in 1228. Each koan is accompanied by a commentary and verse by Wumen.
A classic edition includes a 49th case composed by Anwan in 1246. Wuliang Zongshou also supplemented the volume with a verse of four stanzas composed in 1230 about the three barriers of Chan Master Huanglong Huinan.
Since the Southern Song Dynasty, the Chinese Buddhist canon has not included The Gateless Gate, but Wumen's disciples brought the work to Japan, where it has been reprinted many times.
It is collected in volume 48 of the Taishō Tripiṭaka [1]. Along with the Blue Cliff Record and the oral tradition of Hakuin Ekaku, The Gateless Gate is a central work much used in Rinzai Zen School practice.
Five of the koans in the work concern the sayings and doings of Zhaozhou; four concern Ummon. The common theme of the koans and Wumen's comments is the inquiry and introspection of dualistic conceptualization. (See Mahayana-Hinduism's nondualism or Advaita Vedanta).
Awakening
SATORI (Japanese 悟り) is a Japanese Zen Buddhist term for "awakening," "comprehension," "understanding" [1], or "insight" (an epiphany, a sudden moment of "clear-seeing" or vipassana, liberating insight). The word derives from the Japanese verb satoru [2, 3]. In the Zen Buddhist tradition, satori refers to a deep experience of kenshō[4, 5], "seeing into one's true nature" [that true nature being the Three Marks of Existence that lead to enlightenment/bodhiin Theravada Buddhist terms]. Ken means "seeing," shō means "nature" or "essence" [4]. Satori and kenshō are commonly translated as "enlightenment," a word that is also used to translate bodhi, prajñā ("wisdom"), and Buddhahood. More
To suddenly see clearly into the nature of things
Each koan epitomizes one or more of the polarities of consciousness that act like an obstacle or wall to theinsight.
The student is challenged to transcend the polarity that the koan represents and demonstrate or show that transcendence to the Zen teacher.
Structure and contents
The text was originally prepared by Wumen as a record of his teaching during a monastic training period held at Longxiang Temple (now Jiangxin Temple in Wenzhou) in the summer of 1228.
Wumen selected the 48 koans and commented on and added a verse for each koan. As was customary in China at the time, an edition might have additions of text inserted by a subsequent owner or publisher.
The best-known version of the text is from the Japanese woodblock edition made from the 1246 manuscript edition that contains the following sections. More
From the unceded lands of Tovaangar (aka Los Angeles or el Pueblo de Los Ángeles, lit. the "City of Angels," once the Spain-dominated Mexican El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles del Río de Porciúncula or "The Town of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels of the River Porciúncula"), we welcome those who respect and nurture this land.
Of course, we can only speak for this First Nation territory, which has the largest concentration of Indigenous peoples in the nation, the others having been largely displaced or forcibly removed from their traditional lands, which they peacefully stewarded for millennia. The original indigenous tribe that nurtured this land for 10,000 years or more are (not were) the Kizh, Tongva, or Gabrieleno American Indians.
The first name is of the customary housing structure, the next is an exonym suggested by a UCLA researcher, and the third was imposed by the invading imperial Spanish forces overtaking Mexico, of which Los Angeles was a part for centuries. It comes from the San Gabriel Mission in the LA suburb of the San Gabriel Valley under the San Gabriel Mountains of the Angeles National Forest.
(Studio Seven Media, LLC) Aug. 14, 2026: Andrew Guiding Young Cloud Morales · Gabrieleno Tongva Ensemble · Connor Chee Tongva Songs We Are Here Ekwa Chem ℗ 2026 Studio Seven Media, LLC Released on: 2026-08-14. Flute: Andrew Guiding Young Cloud Morales Ensemble: Gabrieleno Tongva Ensemble Piano: Connor Chee Producer: Edward Dale Chung Producer: Nicole Zuratis Producer: Kitt Wakeley Producer: Greg Scelsa Unknown: Campbell Young Mixing Engineer: Tony Correlli Mastering Engineer: Kevin Lively Music Publisher: Copyright Control Composer Lyricist: Andrew Guiding Young Cloud Morales.
It's a good idea to pick and choose one's religion. In doing so, a common mistake is to throw out previous customs. When the Indigenous people were "Christianized" by the imperial holy Roman Catholic Church in its Vatican stronghold (formerly devoted completely to Mithra worship before converting to Jesus and Mary adoration), it was inconceivable to leave behind millennia of traditions and practices in tune with nature.
A JuBu friend invited us to a Quaker Friends Meeting for a Sunday morning "meditation." There was silence, which the Society of Friends called worship. We loved it. Returning from summer vacation two weeks ago, we dropped in an hour early and were pleasantly surprised to find Tongva representative Mona Morales Recalde making a presentation with her father Chief Anthony Morales in the audience.
It struck us as odd that here we were in a peace-loving Christian congregation, and she's a happy Presbyterian being helped in her work by her church. Progress is being made because part of the SG Mission, once home to the Native American Joan of ArcToypurina, has been returned, repatriated, restored to Tongva hands.
Having been born into Catholicism and not liking the patriarchy at all (even though there are many beautiful aspects to the peoples' Catholicism worth preserving, not the least of which being the honoring of beloved Mother Mary, Mary Magdalene, and a pre-Church version of Gnostic Jesus, cloistered monkhood, maybe even the Holy Ghost, but the genocidal Father and hypocritical priesthood not so much), it was easy to make the decision to leave it behind.
The Church doesn't let someone get away that easy, so it was easier to leave for agnosticism, atheism, anti-Catholicism. It came to make the most sense to regard all "religion" as Christianity, and all of it was bad and worth rejecting. Some teachings may well be good, of course; the rejection is of the imperial, genocidal, hypocritical, homosexual child molesting institution. Christians are held through fear and childhood indoctrination. If a person is unable to awaken and reject it, that will be that person's downfall.
Imagine the good fortune of finding Eastern philosophy and the diamond in the coal that is Buddhism in particular! Of course, Buddhism in Asia has become an ossified tradition as well, but less so than Western traditions. In any case, Buddhism is relatively new to us in the West so we get to pick and choose what to embrace, what to reject, and what to attempt to change.
Our parents might not always be happy with our decisions, but we sure are. And when one learns the deeper meaning of the Dharma, suddenly one sees Christianity, at least in its original pre-institutional form, has much good.
Now Tongva Natives, Buddhists, Presbyterians, [anti-genocidal] Jews, and Quakers can all hold hands in LA and think, "Hey, at least we can all get along in a place called Pasadena."
In the pre-colonial era, the Indigenous people lived in as many as 100 villages and primarily identified by their village rather than by a pan-tribal name [3].
During colonization, the imperial Spanish invaders referred to these people as Gabrieleño and Fernandeño [a], names derived from the Spanish "missions" (concentration and forced labor camps for Catholic conversion, ethnic cleansing, and reeducation) built on Native land, Mission San Gabriel Arcángel ("Archangel") and Mission San Fernando Rey de España ("King of Spain") [b].
Poor upkeep on modern demonstration models
Tongva (a word that simply means "the land") is the most widely circulated endonym among the people, used by Narcisa Higuera in 1905 to refer to inhabitants in the vicinity of Mission San Gabriel [4]. Some people who identify as direct lineal descendants [5] of the people advocate the use of their ancestral name Kizh as an endonym [6].
The Tongva, along with neighboring groups such as the Chumash (the "beautiful people") of Malibu and Ventura, played an important role in the region's cultural and economic dynamics at the time of the European invasion and displacement "encounter."
The Tongva had developed an extensive trade network through their form of canoes or te'aats (plank-built rowing boats).
Their diverse food and material culture was based on an Indigenous worldview that positioned humans as one strand in a web of life (as expressed in their creation stories) [7, 1, 2, 8].
Over time, different communities came to speak distinct dialects of the Tongva language, part of the Takic subgroup of the Uto-Aztecan language family prevalent throughout Indigenous Mexico, of which Los Angeles was a part.
There may have been five or more such languages (three on the southernmost Channel Islands and at least two on the mainland) [1].
European contact was first made in 1542 by Spanish explorer Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, who was greeted at Santa Catalina by people in a canoe. The following day, Cabrillo and his men entered a large bay on the mainland, which they named Baya de los Fumos ("Bay of Smokes," referring to smog or vapors, a natural consequence of the natural basin) because of the many smoke fires they saw there.
Indigenous peoples smoked fish to preserve it. This is commonly believed to have been San Pedro Bay, near present-day San Pedro [9].
The Gaspar de Portolá land expedition in 1769 resulted in the founding of Mission San Gabriel by Catholic missionary rapist abuser and Priest Junipero Serra in 1771 to begin the ethnic cleansing of the area. Under the mission concentration camp system, the Spanish initiated an era of forced relocation and enslavement. More
Revolutions to resist invaders, imperial occupiers, Catholic rapists
Spanish Catholics celebrating their beautiful traditions in the name of their genocidal God.
Nearly 6,000 Tongva lie dead and buried in the grounds of the San Gabriel Mission today [51]. Carey McWilliams characterized it as follows: "the Franciscan padres ["patriarchs, fathers, Catholic priests"] eliminated Indians with the effectiveness of Nazis operating concentration camps [an idea Hitler and the Nazis got from the USA]...." [52]
There is much evidence of Tongva resistance to the imperial mission system [3, 12] that aimed to enslave and ethnically cleanse them from the land during the ongoing slow genocide.
Many Native individuals returned to their village at the time of death. Many forcibly converted Catholics retained their traditional Indigenous practices in both spiritual and domestic contexts, despite the attempts by the padres and Christian missionaries to suppress, brainwash (erase), and control them.
Traditional foods were incorporated into the white man's impoverished mission diet. Lithic and shell bead production and use persisted. More overt strategies of resistance, such as refusal to enter the system, work slowdowns, abortion and infanticide of children resulting from rape by priests, and uprisings were also prevalent.
Five major uprisings were recorded just at Mission San Gabriel [3], the first of many such concentration camps sexually exploiting the Natives and enslaving them, stripping them of their identity, cultural practices, language, and identity.
Two late-18th-century rebellions against the mission's forced labor system were led by Nicolás José [the Spanish name placed on him by Catholic priests], who was an early Catholic convert who had two social identities, "publicly participating in Catholic sacraments at the mission but privately committed to traditional [Tongva] dances, celebrations, and rituals" [3].
Toypurina: I didn't want us to be raped/erased.
He loved the system so much he participated in a failed attempt to kill the mission's priests in 1779 and organized eight foothill villages in a revolt in October 1785 along with Tongva ShamanToypurina.
She further organized the villages to resist occupation and abuses [53], which "demonstrated a previously undocumented level of regional political unification both within and well beyond the mission" [3]. The mission strategy had always been to divide and conquer.
However, divided loyalties among the Natives contributed to the failure of the 1785 attempt, as well as mission soldiers being alerted of the attempt by Catholic converts or neophytes [3].
George W. Kirkman's 1938 historical map of pre-1860 Los Angeles County shows locations of "Gabrieleño” villages marked with generic "Indian teepees.” (The locals never lived in teepees but rather in wigwam-like structures called kizh).
Kangaroo court trial for Native rebels
Toypurina, José, and two other leaders of the rebellion, Chief Tomasajaquichi of Juvit Village and a Tongva man named Alijivit, from the nearby village of Jajamovit, were put on trial for the 1785 rebellion [53].
At his trial, José stated that he participated because the ban at the mission on Tongva dances and ceremonies instituted by the missionaries, and enforced by the governor of California in 1782, was intolerable as they prevented their mourning ceremonies [3].
When questioned about the attack, Toypurina is famously quoted as saying that she participated in the instigation because “[she hated] the padres and all of you, for living here on my native soil, for trespassing upon the land of my forefathers and despoiling our tribal domains.…
We lived in peace for thousands of years.
“I came [to the Catholic mission] to inspire the dirty cowards to fight, and not to quail at the sight of Spanish sticks that spit fire and death, nor [to] retch at the evil smell of gunsmoke -- and be done with you white invaders!” [53]
Scholars have debated the accuracy of this quote, from Thomas Workman Temple II's article “Toypurina the Witch and the Indian Uprising at San Gabriel,” suggesting it may differ significantly from the testimony recorded by Spanish authorities at the time.
According to the soldier who recorded her words, she stated simply that she ‘‘was angry with the Padres and the others of the Mission, because they had come to live and establish themselves in her land” [53].
In June 1788, nearly three years later, their sentences arrived from Mexico City:
Nicolás José was banned from San Gabriel and sentenced to six years of hard labor in irons at the most distant penitentiary in the region [53].
Toypurina was banished from Mission San Gabriel and sent to the most distant Spanish mission [to be raped and married off to a Spaniard].
[The others all met with similar fates, none exempted, acquitted, or found innocent.]
This violent resistance to occupation, displacement, rape, ethnic cleansing, and Spanish rule demonstrated how the Spanish Crown's claims to California were both insecure and violently contested [12].
By the 1800s, San Gabriel [forced labor camp] was the richest in the entire colonial mission system, supplying invasive species of cattle, sheep, goats, hogs, horses, mules, and other supplies for settlers and settlements throughout Alta ["Upper"] California.
Some historians have dared to accurately portray the mission system as a form of coerced labor that deeply disrupted Indigenous lifeways and autonomy.
The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee
Latter-day ethnologist Hugo Reid reported, “Indian children were taken from their parents to be raised behind bars at the mission. They were allowed outside the locked dormitories only to attend to church business and their assigned chores.
“When they were old enough, boys and girls were put to work in the vast vineyards [to make alcohol] and orchards owned by the missions. “Soldiers watched, ready to hunt down any who tried to escape.”
Writing in 1852, Reid said he knew of Tongva who “had an ear lopped off or were branded on the lip for trying to get away” [54].
In 1810, the “Gabrieleño” forced labor population at the mission was recorded to be 1,201 [slaves]. It jumped to 1,636 in 1820 and then declined to 1,320 in 1830 [51].
Resistance to this system of forced labor continued into the early 19th century. In 1817, the San Gabriel Mission recorded that there were "473 Indian [slave] fugitives" [10].
In 1828, a European German immigrant purchased the land on which the village of Yang-Na stood and evicted the entire community with the help of Mexican officials [55]. More
All materials on this site are submitted by editors and readers. All images, unless otherwise noted, were taken from the Internet and are assumed to be in the public domain.
In the event that there is still a problem, issue, or error with copyrighted material, the break of the copyright is unintentional and noncommercial, and the material will be removed immediately upon presented proof.
Contact us by submitting a comment marked "private."
Do not follow this journal if you are under vinaya or parental restrictions. Secure protection by Sucuri.
Wisdom Quarterly: American Buddhist Journal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at creativecommons.org/about/licenses.
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg){kind=link}