Buddha's Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom

by Rick Hanson

Equanimity is neither apathy nor indifference: you are warmly engaged with the world but not troubled by it. Through its nonreactivity, it creates a great space for compassion, loving-kindness, and joy at the good fortune of others.

Recognize the fleeting nature of rewards and that they usually aren’t actually all that great. See, too, that painful experiences are transient and usually not that awful. Neither pleasure nor pain is worth claiming as your own or identifying with. Further, consider how every event is determined by countless preceding factors so that things can not be any other way. This is not fatalism or despair: you can take action to make the future different. But even then, remember that most of the factors that shape the future are out of your hands. You can do everything right, and still the glass will break, the project will go nowhere, you’ll catch the flu, or a friend will remain upset.

Buddhism has a metaphor for the different conditions in life. They’re called the Eight Worldly Winds: pleasure and pain, praise and blame, gain and loss, fame and ill repute. As you develop greater equanimity, these winds have less effect on your mind. Your happiness becomes increasingly unconditional, not based on catching a good breeze instead of a bad one.

The spaciousness of equanimity is a great support for compassion, kindness, and joy at the happiness of others.

In daily life and meditation, deepen your equanimity by becoming increasingly mindful of the feeling tones of experience and increasingly disenchanted with them. They come and they go, and they’re not worth chasing or resisting.

This process of neural evolution may seem dry and remote, but it played out in the daily life-and-death struggles of beings like us in many ways. For millions of years, until the advent of agriculture about 10,000 years ago, our ancestors lived in hunter-gatherer bands, usually with fewer than 150 members (Norenzayan and Shariff 2008). They bred mainly within their own band while searching for food, avoiding predators, and competing with other bands for scarce resources. In that harsh environment, individuals who cooperated with other members of their band typically lived longer and left more offspring (Wilson 1999). Further, bands with strong teamwork usually beat bands with weak teamwork at getting resources, surviving, and passing on their genes (Nowak 2006).

Building on this general sociability, related neural networks support empathy, the capacity to sense the inner state of another person, which is required for any kind of real closeness. If there were no empathy, we’d make our way in life like ants or bees, brushing shoulders with other people but fundamentally alone.

The insula and linked circuits activate when you experience strong emotions such as fear or anger; they also light up when you see others having those same feelings, particularly people you care about. The more aware you are of your own emotional and bodily states, the more your insula and anterior cingulate cortex activate—and the better you are at reading others (Singer et al. 2004).

As the human brain evolved and grew larger, childhood grew longer (Coward 2008). Consequently, hominid bands had to evolve ways to keep their members connected for many years in order to sustain—in the African proverb—“the village it takes to raise a child” and thus pass on the band’s genes (Gibbons 2008). To accomplish this, the brain acquired powerful circuitry and neurochemistry to generate and maintain love and attachment. This is the physical foundation on which your mind has built your experiences of romance, heartache, and deep affection, and your bonds with family members.

Romantic love is found in almost all human cultures, suggesting that it’s deep in our biological—even our biochemical—nature (Jankowiak and Fischer 1992). Although endorphins and vasopressin are involved in the neurochemistry of bonding and love, the major player is probably oxytocin (Young and Wang 2004). This neuromodulator (and hormone) creates feelings of caring and cherishing; it’s present in both females and males, though much more so in women. Oxytocin encourages eye-to-eye contact (Guastella, Mitchell, and Dads 2008); increases trust (Kosfeld et al. 2005); dampens amygdala arousal and promotes approach-type behaviors (Petrovic et al. 2008); and supports tend-and-befriend behaviors in women when they’re stressed (Taylor et al. 2000).

Physical pain and social pain are based on overlapping neural systems (Eisenberger and Lieberman 2004): quite literally, rejection hurts.

Much if not most aggression is a response to feeling threatened—which includes even subtle feelings of unease or anxiety. Because the amygdala is primed to register threats and is increasingly sensitized by what it “perceives,” many people feel increasingly threatened over time. And thus increasingly aggressive.

The wolf of hate is deeply embedded both in the human evolutionary past and in each person’s brain today, ready to howl at any threat. Being realistic and honest about the wolf of hate—and its impersonal, evolutionary origins—brings self-compassion. Your own wolf of hate needs taming, sure, but it’s not your fault that it lurks in the shadows of your mind, and it probably afflicts you more than anyone else.

Love and hate: they live and tumble together in every heart, like wolf cubs tussling in a cave. There is no killing the wolf of hate; the aversion in such an attempt would actually create what you’re trying to destroy. But you can watch that wolf carefully, keep it tethered, and limit its alarm, righteousness, grievances, resentments, contempt, and prejudice. Meanwhile, keep nourishing and encouraging the wolf of love.

Each of us has two wolves in the heart, one of love and one of hate. Everything depends on which one we feed each day.

While the wolf of hate gets more press, the wolf of love is actually bigger and stronger, and its development over millions of years has been a major factor in driving the evolution of the brain. For example, mammals and birds have bigger brains than reptiles and fish in large part to manage relationships with mates and offspring. And the more sociable the primate species, the bigger the brain.

The size of the human brain has tripled in the past three million years; much of this growth is devoted to interpersonal capabilities such as empathy and cooperative planning. In the harsh conditions faced by our ancestors, cooperation aided survival; thus, factors that promote cooperation have been woven into your brain. These include altruism, gener...

Meanwhile, the wolf of hate also evolved. Hunter-gatherer bands frequently engaged in highly lethal violence toward each other. Within-group cooperation made between-group aggression more successful, and the rewards of that aggression—food, mates, survival—promoted within-group cooperation. Cooperation and aggression—love and hate—co-evolved synergistically. Their capabilities and inclinations remain within us today.

Ironically, sometimes the wolf of hate is set outside the circle of “us.” But there is no killing the wolf of hate, and denying it just lets it grow in the shadows. We need to acknowledge the wolf of hate and appreciate the power of the wolf of love—and then restrain the one while feeding the other.

compassion and assertion working together. They’re the two wings that get any relationship off the ground and keep it flying. They support each other: compassion brings caring to assertion, while assertion helps you feel comfortable giving compassion since you know your own needs will be met. Compassion widens the circle of “us” while assertion protects and supports everyone inside it. They both nourish the wolf of love.

In order to be truly compassionate, you must first feel something of what the other person is going through. You must have empathy, which cuts through the automatic tendencies of the brain that create an “us” and a “them.”

To be clear: empathy is neither agreement nor approval. You can empathize with someone you wish would act differently. Empathy doesn’t mean waiving your rights; knowing this can help you feel it’s alright to be empathic.

Be willing to say explicitly what you would like to receive. It often helps to make it clear that it’s empathy you want, not necessarily agreement or approval.

Every day, try to have compassion for five kinds of people: someone you’re grateful to (a “benefactor”), a loved one or friend, a neutral person, someone who is difficult for you—and yourself.

Being assertive means speaking your truth and pursuing your aims in the nitty-gritty of relationships. In my experience, skillful assertiveness is founded on unilateral virtue and effective communication.

Virtue sounds lofty, but it’s actually down to earth. It simply means living from your innate goodness, guided by principle. When you are virtuous no matter what other people do, their behavior is not controlling you.

one fundamental moral value is not to harm people, including yourself. If your needs are not being met in a relationship, that’s harmful to you.

Second, stay in bounds. The Wise Speech section of Buddhism’s Noble Eightfold Path offers good guidelines for communication that stays within the lines: Say only what is well-intended, true, beneficial, timely, expressed without harshness or malice, and—ideally—what is wanted.

Rapid, abrupt actions trigger alarms in the other person’s SNS/HPAA system, which shake a relationship like poking a sleeping cat with a sharp stick. Small but skillful steps prevent these herky-jerky shifts—steps, such as asking if this is a good time to talk before diving in full steam, or not curtly cutting off a conversation that’s striking too close to home.

Stay in touch with your deeper feelings and wants.

Take responsibility for getting your needs met in the relationship. Stay focused on the prize, whatever it is for you, and keep coming back to it. If the other person has important topics of his own, often it works best to take turns, focusing on one topic at a time, rather than mixing them together.

Communicate primarily for yourself, not to produce a particular response from the other person.

When you speak, keep coming back to your own experience—notably, your emotions, body sensations, and underlying hopes and wishes—rather than talking about events, such as the other person’s actions, and your opinions about them.

I highly recommend the approach Marshall Rosenberg details in Nonviolent Communication (2nd Edition 2008), which has essentially three parts: When X happens [described factually, not judgmentally], I feel Y [especially the deeper, softer emotions], because I need Z [fundamental needs and wants].

Compassion is concern for the suffering of beings (including yourself). Assertion is expressing your truth and pursuing your aims within any type of relationship. These two work together. Compassion infuses warmth and caring into your assertiveness. Assertiveness helps you stick up for yourself and others, and to feel confident that you can still get your needs met even while being compassionate.

Asserting yourself skillfully involves unilateral virtue and effective communication. Virtue means living from your innate goodness, guided by principle. Virtue in your mind rests on regulation in your brain; both virtue and regulation require maintaining a balance that is centered around healthy aims, stays within a healthy range, and changes smoothly.

If compassion is the wish that beings not suffer, kindness is the wish that they be happy. Compassion responds primarily to suffering, but kindness comes into play all of the time, even when others are doing fine. Kindness is expressed mainly in small, everyday ways, such as leaving a big tip, reading one more story to a child even though you’re tired, or waving another driver to move ahead of you in traffic.

“kind” and “kin,” share the same root; kindness brings people into the circle of “us” and feeds the wolf of love.

May you be safe. May you be healthy. May you be happy. May you live with ease. You can modify these if you like, using whatever words evoke strong feelings of kindness and love in you. For example: May you be safe from inner and outer harm. May your body be strong and vital. May you truly be at peace. May you and everyone you love prosper. May you be safe, healthy, happy, and at ease.

When you are kind to someone else, you also benefit yourself; it feels good to be kind, and it encourages others to treat you well in turn.

Use things that aggravate you as a way to practice generosity. Consider letting people have what they took: their victory, their bit of money or time, their one-upping. Be generous with forbearance and patience.

Your ill will always harms you, but often it has no effect on the other person; as they say in twelve-step programs: Resentment is when I take poison and wait for you to die.

Life includes getting wounded. Accept as a fact that people will sometimes mistreat you, whether accidentally or deliberately. Of course, this doesn’t mean enabling others to harm you, or failing to assert yourself. You’re just accepting the facts on the ground. Feel the hurt, the anger, the fear, but let them flow through you. Ill will can become a way to avoid facing your deep feelings and pain.

To the extent that it’s useful, speak your truth and stick up for yourself with skillful assertiveness. Your ill will is telling you something. The art is to understand its message—perhaps that another person is not a true friend, or that you need to be clearer about your boundaries—without being swept away by anger.

As in the story of the gorilla above, have faith that others will pay their own price one day for what they’ve done. You don’t have to be the justice system.

Forgiveness doesn’t mean changing your view that wrongs have been done. But it does mean letting go of the emotional charge around feeling wronged. The greatest beneficiary of your forgiveness is usually you.

Reflect on the suffering so many people endure. Reflect, too, on what others may have been like as young children—this will activate the warmth and goodwill we naturally feel toward little kids.

If compassion is the wish that someone not suffer, kindness is the wish that he or she be happy.

It helps to remember that kindness is its own reward, that consequences often come to others without you needing to bring justice to them yourself, and that you can be assertive without falling into ill will.

There are many ways to turn ill will to goodwill and tame the wolf of hate. Be careful about the intentions you attribute to others; take fewer things personally; regard your ill will as an affliction upon yourself that you naturally want to be relieved of; resolve to meet mistreatment with loving-kindness; communicate and assert yourself; and forgive.