Heroic Interview: Buddha’s Brain with Rick Hanson

You're listening to Buddha's Brain, an optimal living interview with Rick Hanson and Brian Johnson.

I am here today with Rick Hanson, so excited to chat about Buddha's Brain, the practical neuroscience of happiness, love and wisdom. And Rick has become one of my favorite teachers. And I'm so excited to have you on this chat today, Rick.

Thank you, Brian. It's a great pleasure to be here.

Wonderful. Well, you're doing such extraordinary work on mindfulness. As the subtitle to your book says, the Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love and Wisdom. I would love to start with that. Tell me about what is practical neuroscience.

Sure. The practical takeaway is that right now, what people are thinking, feeling, seeing, hearing, sensing, and all the rest of it is constructed moment to moment. Buy three pounds of tofu, like tissue right inside the coconut, and if you can get more control over what's happening between your ears, you can absolutely transform yourself to become happier, stronger, more resilient, kinder, more loving, more able to help yourself and also other beings.

That's fantastic. So the tofu inside the coconut. So how do we go about doing that? It becomes part of this conversation.

Sure. Well, a little frame here. So by mind or any word I use like that, like thought or feeling or mental, whatever I really mean the way neuroscientists do. Flows of information or information stored in the nervous system. In a sense, hardware that's physical represents non physical, immaterial software, meanings, signals, programs, memories and all the rest of that. Okay. As mental activity proceeds, as you think about things or tend to X or shift your attention to why get irritated with somebody at work, have a big idea that you then shut down because you're afraid of swinging for the fences. As all of that is happening, right, it's occurring based on underlying neural activity. Mental activity maps to neural activity. Firings of vast assemblies of synapses, the 500 trillion or so synapses inside the coconut, as it were, well, repeated patterns of neural activity changes neural structure. This means, bottom line, that you can use your mind to change your brain, to change your mind for the better. That's what is called self directed neuroplasticity. The notion is that since neurons that fire together wire together, if you are a little bit skillful, and that's what my book Buddhist Brain was about, just getting a little bit skillful about, in a sense, the wiring diagram, or where the levers are, where the buttons to push are inside your own brain, you can stimulate and therefore gradually strengthen over time. Since neurons that fire together wire together, different parts of your Own brain, which will then improve your own well being and functioning.

So powerful and just this idea of neuroplasticity. We can rewire our brain. I mean, this is a new concept, right? How long ago was it that we actually thought that was fixed?

Yeah, well, it's interesting. For a long time people have understood probably well over a century in western science that the brain had to change. If there was any learning, whether it's a kid, I know you just had a child recently. Whether it's a kid learning to walk instead of crawl, or us remembering whatever we had for breakfast today, or a person becoming more capable of being a stronger leader or being more creative or more able to be emotionally intelligent, as it were, with staff to get the most out of them, or to be able frankly to sustain attention for spiritual practice more and more capably. Well, any of those learnings require change in the underlying brain structure. So this notion of neuroplasticity is itself not new. What is breaking news is clarity about the many ways that it occurs inside the brain and the many ways that practical guys like me, I think of myself as a methods guy deep in the trenches that practical guys or people altogether can use this information in a targeted way to get those brain circuits going in the right direction.

That's fantastic. So let's go into that. So what are your top practices that you look at as you kind of teach this practical application of this wisdom?

Yeah, well, let me if I could, Brian, just take a couple minutes to create a bit of a frame because it's a really important frame. And here it is. My own background in contemplative practice is in Buddhism and there's a traditional saying, there's that the mind takes its shape from whatever it rests upon, for better or worse. Well, the modern uptake based on this experience dependent neuroplasticity stuff is that the brain takes its shape from whatever you rest your mind upon. So for example, if you routinely rest your mind upon the negative, you know, the ordinary stuff in the head of regrets, self criticism, resentments, grumbling, complaints about others, etc. Well, over time your brain will take the shape of growing sensitivity to things, worsening mood, less serotonin production, more vulnerability to negative things happening in life. On the other hand, if you rest your mind repeatedly on your own good qualities that are real, on the good qualities in others, or the good treatment that is coming your way, that's actually the case, not rose colored glasses seeing that's really the case. Or rest your mind on opportunities and accomplishments, etcetera. Well, your brain will take a different shape, one that has more resilience in it, one that has inner strength, more well being, more virtue, more loving kindness. Okay. The difference though between the positive and the negative is this. The brain is much more vulnerable to negative changes than to positive change. It has a hardwired negativity bias, which is what scientists call it, that kept our ancestors alive, but today makes us miserable, makes us less effective at work and at home, and builds up long term chronic stress, which is a serious risk factor for long term health problems. The reason for the negativity bias, the reason why the brain is really good at learning from the bad and bad at learning from the good, is that bad events, you know, predators, natural hazards, social aggression inside a primate band or between early human bands, those bad events have typically more urgency and impact than positive ones. And this negativity bias shows up in lots and lots of ways. You know, for example, the common finding that strong relationships need at least a 5 to 1 ratio of positive to negative experience experiences, or the finding that negative experiences get converted to memory, get converted to neural structure immediately. While positive experiences, even though they're the primary source of the inner resources we all need to get through the long hard road of life, positive experiences usually wash through the brain like water through a sieve, while negative ones are caught every time. That's my phrase, therefore my phrase that the brain is like Velcro for negative experiences and tough one for positive ones. So for me, one of my takeaways. Now we're getting to the practical point. Thanks for letting me digress, Sarah. I'll make this practical point and let you get a word of natural. One of the key takeaways is to be much more thoughtful about dwelling on the negative. I'm much less willing to just indulge myself. I want to feel the feelings. I think it's important to experience the experience, especially frankly, as a man who is kind of socialized in my own case to not feel my feelings. So I think it's important to be with what's there, to hold it in open awareness to a point. But as soon as you're not getting any more value from it, as soon as you know what this negative feeling is all about or negative preoccupation, try to move on because your brain is so vulnerable to being shaped by that negative experience. So that's my first takeaway. Do not underestimate the power of the dark side of the force. Do not underestimate the power of negative experiences to change your brain for the worse. I think pain is way overrated.

Just amazing. And when you talk about resting your mind, I just love that phrase. Reminds me, I was having a chat with Sony Liebomirsky earlier and she was coming to her howls of happiness and her new book, the Myths of Happiness, and talking about the importance of attention and being able to put our attention essentially where we want, when we want, which is what we're talking about here. Right. Of can we notice when we're slipping into the negative and can we shift our attention? And obviously with Buddha's brain, meditation is a big part of your work and your teachings. Can you talk to us about meditation and why meditation is something that we should all consider integrating into our life in our daily practice?

Yeah, that's interesting.

So.

Well, let's see. So even though, quote unquote, neurons that fire together, wire together, do so throughout the nervous system, that process of building structure based on information flows through the nervous system is turbocharged for what's held in the field of focused attention. Attention is like a combination spotlight and vacuum cleaner. It illuminates what it rests upon and then sucks it into your brain. The problem is most people don't have very good control of their attention, as you're pointing out, and their vacuum cleaner, as it were, rests on crud. And it's hard to pull it off the crud and rest it on something much more useful. So attentional training such as meditation is incredibly important. Over a century ago, I think, as you know, William James, the godfather of American psychology, said the education of attention would be the education par excellence because it's the mother of all education. It's absolutely fundamental. So meditation, there are many kinds of meditation. Sometimes people bring in a theistic element involving the divine, and then it has a quality of prayer. Other people do their meditation in a way that's, let's say, agnostic or atheist, where the divine is not relevant to the meditation, either way is fine. It's contemplative practice either way. You know, a simple form of contemplative practice that I'll just nominate to people is pick something simple to use to anchor your attention, to create, in effect, a kind of backdrop against which distracting thoughts and feelings and desires and so forth can come and go. A common object of attention is the breath, because it's always available, the sensations of the breath felt generally in the body or in one particular place. And then dedicate yourself for a certain amount of time, like a minute or five minutes or longer, if you want to, simply giving yourself over to that object of attention and abandoning all else. So it's kind of like a workout, Brian. You know, it's like when I go to the gym, I know that I'm either lifting the weight or I'm fooling around, you know? And this kind of meditation, technically it's called a focused attention or concentration practice, is really good for building up your initial muscles of attention and traditionally, interesting. Even though nowadays in the west, people want to jump to meditations that are very cosmic or very much open awareness, let it all come and let it go, which is very challenging. Traditionally, the concentration practice that I'm talking about of just give yourself to an object of attention and stay with it for five minutes or more if you can, is what's taught in the very, very beginning. So that's what I would suggest to people. And I'd also add, don't be hard on yourself if your mind wanders. That's totally normal. The brain evolved to produce a wandering mind because that enabled our ancestors to be more vigilant for threats and more opportunistic for potential rewards. It's really okay. But as soon as you notice that your mind is wandering, come back. And then if along the way, you can encourage supporting factors like a growing sense of calm or peacefulness or a sense of feeling centered or even a growing sense of well being. That's good, too, both for its own sake and also because neurologically, those positive emotions actually in very cool ways, support steady attention.

Yeah, that's great. And one of the things I love about the way that you present meditation in your book and in your work is that one minute show up in what we don't need to be levitating monks in the Himalayas, meditating for hours on day, day in and day out. That one minute. But then also the consistency of the practice is essential, correct?

Yeah. The thing I see routinely, Brian, I bet you do, too, is that in part because I'm a practicing therapist, I'll see people routinely who will work very hard to get good at something that they say doesn't matter much, who simultaneously will not work hard at all at getting good at something they will say matters a lot, like being a better or more skillful partner or mate or parent or more skillful and competent with their own thoughts and feelings. Feelings. And being a teacher and a therapist a long time, it's made me, I think, more compassionate, but also tougher in a sense. You got to earn it. You got to do the work, as you say, you got to show up. But if you do show up. It's the law of little things. Lots of little efforts sustained over time will have a big payoff because you will gradually be changing your brain for the better.

Yeah, I love that. I love your focus on the everyday, ordinary activity as well as the personal growth and spiritual practices are really how we can honor ourselves. And you talk about being nice to our future self. I love the way you frame that. Can you describe that for us? Being nice to our future self?

Well, it's interesting. One of the hardest things. Here's a little. It's a lame but profound joke. How many therapists does it take to change a light bulb? Only one. But the light bulb has to one want to change. In other words, motivation is the key. And that's shown up. Boy, oh boy. In research on health, health promotion, Sonja's work on happiness, you know, motivation is such an important factor. So then the question becomes, how do we help motivate ourselves especially to do the things that we're not naturally inclined toward or might even dislike? And here is where getting on your own side is absolutely central. Being for yourself, not against others, but being a good friend to yourself. If you're not a good friend to yourself, and as Rabbi Hillel said or wrote a long time ago, if not now, when, then you're kind of dead in the water in life and you're not going to do anything for yourself at all. So one way to motivate yourself, I'll name two right now, and these are practices I do myself. Two ways to help yourself become. To lean more in your own direction, as it were. Number one, build up more of a sense of feeling cared about by other people. Research shows that if you warm up the circuits, as it were, of the heart in a metaphorical sense of feeling cared about by other people, it doesn't have to be a perfect relationship, just a bunch of friends. You're part of a gang of buddies you work out with. Maybe could be family and friends, could be media, spiritual beings, whatever. Whatever gives you that feeling. It could be a pet, frankly. Whatever gives you that feeling of being cared about, marinate in it. And when you have opportunities to experience it, really take it in. Which I'll talk about maybe a little bit more in a moment. The second, because what it shows is that when you do that, it primes your circuits of being caring yourself, including caring toward the one being among all others who wears your name, name tag. So that's my first suggestion. The second suggestion I have is to use the friend test. In other words, if you had a friend who had a particular situation or issues or feelings or needs or sorrows or hopes, what have you, how would you respond to your dear friend? And then if you. How can I put it? Or rather, if your friend had the same problems as you do, why not respond to yourself in response same way to me? That's the friend test. And as a lot of moral philosophy shows, we have the highest duty to the people that we have the most power over. Well, who is the one being, among all others, that you have the greatest power over? It's your future self. One minute from now, one year from now, in the last year of your life, it's your future self, and that's the one to whom you have the highest duty. So when I started thinking about this, I started looking at how I spent my day very differently. And instead of indulging myself in negative stuff that I knew would kick the can down the road, as it were, but my future self would have to pick that can up. Or when I began realizing how much I would benefit my future self by doing little things these days, it helped me become more motivated.

Yes. So well said. And I love the friend test. And it's interesting with our little baby here that the kind of baby test has been a big one for me as well. Of how would I support our little guy, Emerson, in 15, 25, 35 years, as he's facing different challenges in his life. And such an amazing way to gain that perspective and just love that. And that idea of the future self and. And holding ourselves as preciously as we would our own child is so empowering.

Yeah, right on.

Well, so one of the other things we kind of started moving toward. And I want to hear you describe the importance of our parasympathetic nervous system, if you can tell us, what is it? Why is it important? How do we turn it on more consistently? Can you talk about that a little bit?

Yeah, sure. So as our ancestors evolved, they had to deal with changing conditions. So different parts of the nervous system develop to deal with this. And one is called the parasympathetic nervous system, which is basically a wing of this larger network called the autonomic nervous system that's very involved in regulating the organs of the body and also regulating, in addition to things like heartbeat and breathing, regulating how we engage the world. Well, the parasympathetic nervous system is the most ancient wing of the autonomic nervous system. And it is the antidote to this part where the importance really starts coming in. It's the antidote to the other wing of the autonomic nervous system, the sympathetic nervous system, which is our stress response, fight or flight wing. So we have both. Our resting state, in which we refuel and repair the body and the mind is in a, a basic sense of peacefulness, happiness and love in terms of our three core needs to avoid harm, approach rewards and attach to others. And that's where peace, happiness and love connect. That's our resting state. But we also evolved the capacity to go into brief reactive bursts in which there's a lot of sympathetic nervous system fight or flight activation to deal with an immediate threat or a fantastic opportunity. But then we're supposed to. This is mother nature's blueprint to have a long period of rest and recovery from these stressful bursts. The problem is, in modern life, while we may not have the panic of a zebra racing away from a charging lion, nonetheless we have lots of mild to moderate chronic stress with no time for recovery. And in between these waves of reactive stress experiences. And that totally violates mother Nature's blueprint and has a lot of long term negative effects on mental and physical health. So becoming a master of your own parasympathetic nervous system, especially if in the real world, you know what I mean, you're not going to go to the commune, right? You're not going to go back to the cave. You can't sit on the beach all the time. You wouldn't want to sit on the beach the time. All, all the time. What are you going to do to me? This means since we can't change the world outside, we need to become more competent. We need to be better friends to ourselves. We need to become more fiercely committed to our own well being, including through mastery of the parasympathetic nervous system and a couple really simple things people can do on the fly. Get that parasympathetic activation going which will pull you out of this sympathetic nerve nervous system, stress wave, stress response wave, and then bring you home. One is to take several long exhalations. Those are so useful. Another is to touch your mouth. Because the parasympathetic nervous system is involved in both of those exhaling and digestion, which begins in the mouth. And then the last thing you can do, which builds on something I said previously, is bring to mind the sense of someone, of being with someone who loves you, you. Because back in the Serengeti, as our ancestors evolved, exile was a death sentence. So one of the primary pathways to coming home to this basic sense of safety and peacefulness is through feeling cared about by other people. And then when you have these experiences to underscore my point about taking in the good, take the extra 10 to 20 seconds to let them sink in. Because you got a brain that's like Velcro for the negative, but Teflon for the positive. Positive. So to defeat that negativity bias and to drive these resource experiences into your brain, so you start to install them into your brain as lasting resources. Take that extra 10 to 20 seconds to stay with the positive experience to help it sink into you.

Yeah, that's amazing. And that's kind of two things that I wanted to make sure we talked about as well, where you just touched on briefly on both the idea of cultivating positive emotions and, you know, kind of adding some, some stickiness to that Teflon for the positive. And then also. So I'd love to hear you chat about that a little bit. And then we'd love to also hear you kind of unpack loving kindness more. That's such an important theme to this work. And we'd love to start with more ideas on cultivating positive emotions. And then I'll bring us back to the loving kind of.

Yeah. So positive emotions are on a range of intensity. Most of them are really mild, you know, and just kind of a basic sense of well being. I'm having a lot of fun here. You know, on the 0 to 10 intensity scale, if the San Francisco Giants winning the World series was a 10 or whatever, you know, or the day my kid was born, Sorry, kid. It was also a 10. There's no 11 on this scale. It's not like Spinal Tap. All right, well, you know, this is now a three or a four, which is pretty high. Most positive experiences are ones and twos, even their point 3s, but any port in a storm. So positive emotions are pleasant in their own right. And hey, that's worth having. Fine. But they are very, very important building blocks, as research is showing, of inner resources as well as broadening our view of the world. That's a tip of the hat to Barbara Fredrickson's great work on the broaden and build theory of positive emotions. So there are two ways to get to positive emotions. Number one, notice the ones you're already having. So often in life, we're actually feeling pretty good, but we hardly even notice it. And like I said, it washes through the brain like water through a sip. Alternately, be very willing to create positive emotions by thinking of things that naturally activate them. And I actually go into a lot of detail on this in the book that I'm now writing, which will come out in October, on taking in the good. So if people want it or this interview is still available, there will be a lot more examples of how to actually get these good states of mind going in the first place, but then second, once you got it going, once you light the fire. In terms of the three steps of taking in the good, if you will, step one being activating a positive experience, having it in the first place. Then in the second and third steps, you got to install it in your brain. And that's where the second step comes in of adding logs to the fire. Extend the experience, help it last as long as possible, 10, 20, 30 seconds in a row. Help it be as intense as possible and help it fill your body as much as possible. That's the second step of really keeping the benefit of this positive experience, rather than just wasting it, which is the default setting of the brain. And then in the third step, prime memory systems by sensing and intending that it is sinking into you, that you are absorbing it. That whole sequence normally takes 10 to 20 seconds if you fall below that threshold, generally, and it's a fuzzy threshold, but if you fall below the threshold, the positive experience does not encode in neural structure. It's just wasted contrasting to negative experiences which get encoded immediately. So that's the first thing I want to say about positive emotions. And another good way to cultivate positive emotions, I'll say in passing as I transition here, is be nice to other people. Maybe that's where loving kindness comes in. So I'll talk about that. One very available way for us at any time to feel good is to be happy for the good fortune of other people. Because someone somewhere is always happy about something. Whether it's children laughing or parents putting their kid to bed after a long day, or someone eating an ice cream sundae, somebody making love, somebody praying, someone out in nature, someone surfing. Fill in the blank. Someone's having a good time. You can be happy that they're happy. That's not technically loving kindness. It's what's more called altruistic traffic. Happiness, the welfare of others. But it's available to us also. It's available to almost everyone at almost every moment to find good wishes in their heart for at least one other being. And that's loving kindness, the wish that a being be happy usually combined with emotions of warmth and caring and supportiveness. And research shows that if people routinely practice these experiences of loving kindness, that you can actually change neural structure and incline the mind Increasingly in this direction, which interestingly also tends to activate the motor circuits in the brain. So it's not just that we have a sense of kindness toward people, the wish that they be happy, or compassion toward people, the wish that they not suffer. In addition to that, we start to mobilize increasingly an inclination to help in any way we can. So I think that loving kindness practice, which is something that's become increasingly important to me as a deliberate thing, is something you can do in a formal sense in your own meditation. Or you can do it more informally, including toward. This is a fun one. I do these kind of like loving kindness hit and runs with total strangers. I'll be walking down the street and I'll see someone walking toward me. And in a fun way. Actually it's even more fun to pick someone that I would normally not have anything to do with, maybe, or just someone who just seems like really cut from a different cloth for me somehow. And then I will just wish them well, not in an intrusive way, but I'll look at their face. I'll see frankly the suffering that's in the face of everyone, the stress, the strain, the knowledge that those we love will eventually pass away to all of that and just wish that person well. Wish that that person become truly happy. Wish that that person's deepest, nearest and dearest dreams are someday fulfilled. Anyway, that's a really good way to build muscles because that's fundamentally what we're talking about here, neural muscle building.

That's just amazing. I'm sitting here looking forward. I'd love to chat with you again when your new book comes out. We can go into so much more detail on the course. Cultivating positive emotions and what a beautiful exercise. Felt myself swept away and just the beauty of that. So this is all great. We can talk and I wish we could for a whole weekend on these ideas. I'd love to hear your thoughts on what are your fundamentals? One of the big things that, as you know, a part of optimal living for me and in my work is the fundamentals. What are the fundamentals that we engage in on a day to day basis? We'd love to hear you share some of your practices that might inspire the people listening to this.

Yeah, thank you, Brian. Well, I think two I've already named, but I'll just underline them again briefly. One is to continually activate the parasympathetic wing of the nervous system by relaxing. Imagine a needle or a dial inside your mind that goes from green to chartreuse to yellow. To orange, to red. That's your personal stress O meter, your stressometer, as it were. And you know, we can handle pretty sustained chartreuse, sustained yellow. You're starting to pay a price, you know, and then when you get to orange, it's metal on metal. Those brake pads are grinding. You know, you're through the brake pad now, you're starting to do serious damage. Any kind of sustained orange and definitely sustained red. So this ought to be kind of a wake up call for people in high powered careers who are driving, driving, driving. There's a lot of collateral damage for having your personal stressometer in anything above yellow in any kind of sustained way. When I notice my needle moving into the yellow, and definitely if it's into the orange or God forbid, the red, I really move quickly to try to get it back to chartreuse or even green through long exhalation. Taking a quick break, having some physical pleasure, that's another good way to move your stress needle back into at least yellow, if not chartreuse or green. Like eat a cookie, you know, get a little coffee, whatever it is, you know, or run cold water or warm water on your hands and so forth. So number one, routine, relaxation. Two, you know, the world is very jangling and I figure, you know, it's on me. I got to be strong, I got to step up to not let the world push me around so much, number one. Number two, taking in the good. Oh, my gosh. I just think we live unless our lives are absolute horror. And sadly, that is the case for some people abroad and at home even as we speak here. That said, most people, most days are living as if the path before them is strewn with pearls. And we don't even notice the pearls usually. Or if we do, we don't even feel anything about them. Or if we feel anything, we don't stay with it at 10, 20, 30 second threshold, past that threshold whereby it can transfer into neural coding and we can actually start weaving those pearls into the fabric of our brain, our self and our life. So instead of that, I say no, bring the vacuum cleaner. Use the power of attention, as you're pointing out, to, to stay with some, at least half a dozen, maybe a dozen or more of those little legitimate valid opportunities for a positive experience. So you gradually fill up your cup, you gradually fill the hole in your own heart. So I'd say those two practices are very important to me and maybe I'll just name a third in passing here. Increasingly, I try to see life in an impersonal way and by that I don't mean letting people off the hook morally, including myself. And I also don't mean failing to stick up for myself. I mean, I'm pretty strong advocate for myself. But when you start to see the world more as a stream of 10,000 currents, all wiggling and tussling and swirling together, anything that's happening, whether it's an incident, experience, a momentary thought or feeling or emotion or physical pain or longing or happiness, whatever, or any external event, it's just an eddy in that stream. Some of those eddies are more fleeting than others, like internal thoughts. Others are longer lasting, like El Capitan or your mother in law or father in law. Don't want to pick on the mothers here, but anyway. But everything's an eddy in a strain. And when you move more to this 10,000 foot view, the bird's eye view, what's called technically the allocentric perspective, distinct from the egocentric self referential, taking life personally perspective, it interestingly activates networks on the sides of your brain which pull you out of stressing and gnawing and grumbling and a strong sense of me, myself and I, and help you orient to life in a more even keeled way, a more open hearted and relaxed way. So I would say that's a third practice that I try to do routinely is to see things in a more impersonal, big picture way in which I'm just a part of a much larger whole.

Fantastic. Again, I just love the vision of the stressometer and that green moving toward the yellow, the orange, the red tissue, taking in the good, seeing life in a more impersonal way and just really seeing those streams coming and not being quite so attached to the whole process. Wonderful. Really appreciate you sharing and I can feel the fruits of your practice and how beautifully you articulate all these ideas. So thank you for that and I'd love to wrap it up with. If you can share, if you had to give kind of your number one idea, your number one tip for people who are passionate about optimizing their lives, what would that number one tip be?

Take in the good. Absolutely, take in the good. Because you know, the brain is biased to the negative and also the brain evolved to lie to us. What I mean by that is that our ancestors evolved to crave, broadly defined and suffer in order to survive and pass on their genes. So routinely in terms of our three fundamental needs, which map loosely to the reptilian brainstem and the mammalian subcortical region and the primate human cortex very loosely mapping our Three needs to avoid harms, approach rewards and attach to others. Which for me has been a very useful overarching framework in terms of that Mother Nature is constantly whispering to us, be afraid in terms of the avoiding harm system or you don't have enough. Go get more in terms of the approaching system or you know they're mistreating you, you're disconnected, you got to get more love, go for it in terms of the attaching system. And most of the time that's just a lie. We're actually banned basically. All right, right now in terms of the avoiding system, most of the time we're always overwhelmingly filled by moment to moment stimulation in terms of the approaching system. And most people, barring those in abject poverty, really actually have enough. And there are plenty of opportunities for a sense of fullness and gratitude. And third, most of us are, we're all, all of us are already connected to everything and most of us have been loved and are being loved today. And so to me the opportunity in taking in the good is to stick up for the truth. The truth that sets us free, that ultimately undoes the causes of craving that leads to suffering and harm through the recognition the felt emotionally based in the body based recognition, moment to moment of the ways that we are already full. So, so one of my practices related to taking the good is to drive it in, to drive the truth into my lying brain 10,000 times over so it finally gets the truth of always prior fullness. You're already fed, so there's no basis for the craving that leads to suffering and harm. You can still like things and aspire without attachment and be ambitious and reach high and swing for the fences and aim for the stars. But not based on an underlying sense of deficit which is mother Nature's model for motivating us to do what it takes to pass on our genes.

Wonderful. And taking in the good. Is this the name of your next book?

Yeah, well, actually I'm not sure it'll be the name. We're still searching for the perfect title. But it's described in Buddha's Brain. I think it's the fourth chapter and also it's in my other book, Just One Thing. Thing. It's the second chapter and it's something that people can also see on my website, Rick Hansonsonson.net, i have a lot of freely offered material there and they can learn more about this practice there too.

That's great. We'll make sure that we link to you and your great books in the section with this interview and I'll look forward to diving in deeper and sharing this wisdom via philosopher's notes, however else we can help really appreciate you and your wisdom and your embodiment of these practices. It's deeply inspiring for me and we covered so much ground in this quick chat. So thank you so much. Rick.

Yeah, thanks Brian. If I could say one last thing in under 30 seconds, it's that I think what the world needs now is for 7 billion humans to truly take in the good. Because so much of the world's problems these days are based on delusions in a broad sense, ignorance certainly in terms of the avoiding, approaching and attaching systems of the brain. And when we internalize a sense of fullness, you know, we're going to treat each other a lot better. We're going to stop heating up the planet and we're going to find a way to live with each other in sustainable prosperity and peace.

Amen. Well, thank you for sharing that and thank you for sharing all of your joy and wisdom.

Thank you.

Thanks Rick.

We hope you enjoyed this optimal living interview. Please visit Bryan Johnson me for more.