Neuroscience of Awakening: Buddhist Brain

Asangoham, April 29, 2023; Eds., Wisdom Quarterly

The Neuroscience of Awakening: Your Brain on Buddhism

(Asangoham) Our brains have the amazing ability to change themselves. This is called neuroplasticity.

[The brain is not the mind. Mind is near the heart]

Our brains are not fixed structures. Rather, they are dynamic systems that are constantly changing and evolving in response to the environment.

In fact, research done in the last decade has shown that the brain is much more malleable and responsive to change than previously thought.

Neuroplasticity can occur at different levels of the brain, from the level of individual neurons to the level of entire brain regions.

One of the primary features of neuroplasticity is that it is activity-dependent. This means that the changes in the brain are driven by experiences and activities.

For example, if a person engages in a particular activity repeatedly, such as learning to play a musical instrument or practicing a new language, the brain will adapt to these experiences and develop new neural connections that support these activities.

Neuroplasticity also has important implications for understanding the relationship between the mind and the brain. If the brain can change and adapt in response to experiences, this means that our minds also can change and adapt.

But what do we mean when we say “mind”? What is a mind? The mind is nothing but thoughts. There is no mind without thoughts.

• [There is. Mind knows. Thought is the attempt to symbolize conceptualizations. According to the Abhidharma and verifiable personal experience, there were all these things before the brain. They exist independently.]

Therefore, because of the neuroplasticity of brains, we can radically change our thought patterns, or our minds. We can change our thought patterns to have happier or more beneficial minds.

But even more than this. We can also develop the capacity to slow or even stop thought completely by the activity of focusing attention on the emptiness or empty silence between thoughts.

Many religious and mystical traditions, including many schools of Buddhism, teach that it is this capacity to rest in the emptiness between thought that ultimately reveals the very nature of reality, and the reality of who we truly are.

#buddhism #neuroscience #awakening #buddha #spirituality

Script: Matt Mackane. Edit: Medo. Voiceover: Andrea Giordani. Music: Epidemic Music x Original. 

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