cover image Neurodharma: New Science, Ancient Wisdom, and Seven Practices of the Highest Happiness

Neurodharma: New Science, Ancient Wisdom, and Seven Practices of the Highest Happiness

Rick Hanson. Harmony, $26.99 (352p) ISBN 978-0-5931-3546-4

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. (May)