PNTV - Buddha's Brain by Rick Hanson

You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson. More wisdom in less time.

Hey, guys, what's up? This is Brian with another Philosopher's Notes TV episode. This one's on a great book called Buddha's the Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom. It's by a guy named Rick Hanson with. With Richard Mendias. I'm just getting to know Rick and just an awesome guy. His work is extraordinary and it's basically the intersection of psychology, neurology, and contemplative practice. Psychology, neurology, contemplative practice. Very cool. How do we develop happiness, love, wisdom combining these three cool areas? And the book's packed with big ideas. The note is as well. We've got less than 10 minutes to hit it, so I'm going to focus on a handful of my favorites. As always, we're going to go quickly. Hopefully we'll deliver some more wisdom in less time. So we're going to talk about your future self and being nice to your future self by doing the right things. Today, we're going to talk about the importance of activating your parasympathetic nervous system. Meditation is a very good thing. Even just one minute a day is awesome. We're going to talk about equanimity. We just did another video on that. But that's a great word that we both love and a great concept. We both love unilateral virtue. This is a really cool idea. Live your virtues and your ideals independent of whether people around you are living them. We're also going to talk about challenging chats. And when you have them, imagine that you had a video camera playing. That's one way to make sure that you're being mindful. So there you go. That's a quick look at what we're going to cover. Let's jump in. Being nice to your future self. Rick says it's a general moral principle that the more power you have over someone, the greater your duty is to use that power benevolently. Well, who is the one person in the world you have the greatest power over? It's your future self. You hold that life in your hands, and what it will be depends on how you care for it. What an amazing image. Imagine your future self and know that the decisions you're making today are creating the future you. As Rick tells us, everyday ordinary activities, as well as any personal growth or spiritual practices contain dozens of opportunities to change your brain from the inside out and therefore change your life. He says a single raindrop doesn't have much effect, but if you have enough raindrops and enough time, you can carve a Grand Canyon. Little by little, we change our lives. Just like the Buddha tells us in the Dhammapada. He says, little by little, a person becomes evil as a water pot is filled by drops of water. Little by little, a person becomes good as a water pot is filled by drops of water. One of my absolute favorite ideas. Little by little, drop by drop, moment by moment, decision by decision, we become the next highest version of ourselves. Or not. So remember that and don't think it's all about the crazy, inspiring weekend workshops and forgetting the things that are more mundane. It's about the moment to moment little decisions we make that reshape our brains and shape our destinies. So big, big idea. Next one is activating the parasympathetic nervous system. Rick makes a great point here about the fact that our body has numerous major systems, including the endocrine or the hormone system, cardiovascular, immune, gastrointestinal and nervous systems. And he asks us if we want to use the mind body connection to lower your stress, cool the fires and improve your long term health. What's the optimal point of entry into all of these systems? It's the autonomic nervous system. Now, part of the autonomic nervous system is your parasympathetic system. We're not going to go into the details and all this, but the short story here is if you want to impact your parasympathetic nervous system, you need to do so by inducing relaxation. By doing that, you directly impact every other major system in your body. Your hormones, your cardiovascular system, your immune system. Everything moves with your parasympathetic nervous system and getting out of fight or flight and more consistently, getting into a state of relaxation. We talk about this a lot. The Relaxation Revolution is another great book. We'll be doing a note on that. But you do so you activate relaxation, obviously through deep breathing, through meditation, through all these different practices that get us out of fight or flight. So now meditation, here's a great little passage we'll get into for a moment. The key to reaping the rewards of meditation is to develop a regular daily practice, no matter how brief. Rick says, how about making a personal commitment never to go to sleep without having meditated that day, even if just for one minute. What if you just committed to meditating for one minute, 100% commitment and meditate every single day, not for the hour or the half an hour that you might like to, or even the 15 minutes, but one minute, your life will transform just through that simple commitment. And we know that if you're willing to commit as little as 12 to 15 minutes a day, you can change the genetic expression expression of your. The expression of your genes in as few as six weeks. 12 to 15 minutes a day. Crazy. But just make the commitment at least one minute a day before you go to sleep. I also did a video I'll link to on the hows and whys of meditation that you might like. Check out below the video here for more on that. For now we're buzzing along. I'm not going to get into this, but check out the note in the book for more. He talks about the roots of suffering and our intentions. And there are two very important questions we need to ask when we think of desires. Are they attached to craving and are they actually noble? But we're going to skip that for now, move to the next big idea, equanimity. I did another video on that. I will link to that below as well. Playing the equanimity game. Equanimity comes from two Latin words which mean it come from aqueous and animus, even mind. Amazing idea. When you're equipped, when you have equanimity, you have a balanced, even mind. Well, we want to cultivate that. That's certainly a hallmark of Buddha's brain. Again, I'll check. I'll send you the video for that. And making it a game. We talk about Marcus Aurelius and how to make that a game. When we find ourselves off balance, see how quickly we can get back to being on balance. Really cool concept. Next big idea is unilateral virtue. Rick tells us virtue sounds lofty, but it's actually down to earth. It simply means living from your innate goodness, guided by principle. He makes the important distinction here. In unilateral virtue. A lot of times we have an attitude of, well, I'll treat you well after you treat me well. They're stuck in a standoff. He says that's not the way to roll. We want to go with unilateral virtuosity and being virtuous unilaterally. We are going to do the right thing regardless of what the circumstances might be presenting or how people are showing. It's an amazing way to show up. He talks about loving kindness. Really cool idea. We're not going to have time to go into that right now. Cultivating positive emotions. Another really, really cool practice. Just finding the things that are going right in your life. We go into more detail on that, but just take moments throughout the day to see what's working in your life. Cultivate that grateful flow. Another video I'll link in. Grateful flow. We want to produce more and more awareness of what's going right in our lives. Really cool idea. And as you do that, you diffuse ill will, which is obviously powerful as well. Then the Just a final note. We got a couple more big ideas. The next big idea I want to talk about is challenging chats and video cameras. This is awesome. So I'll read the whole quote to you. If you think you might be triggered by the interaction and lose your way, just summarize it. Imagine you're going to have a difficult conversation. Now imagine that that conversation is going to be videotaped. Do you respond a little differently? It's a great way to bring mindfulness to your life. Challenging chats and video cameras. Next time you're going to have a challenging conversation, imagine it's going to be on video. And then act so you don't make yourself wince. Great, great, great practice. Try that out. Done it a number of times and it makes you a better human being, which is always a good thing. And then finally we have this idea of being mindful. He says we hear the word mindful more and more these days, but what does it actually mean? Being mindful simply means having good control over your attention. You can place your attention wherever you want and it stays there. When you want to shift it to something else, you can. That's a powerful attribute. He says attention is like a spotlight and you want to be able to put it wherever you want, whenever you want. There is no greater ability we can cultivate than this practice of being mindful. It shapes everything else. It's the heart of principle number one of optimal living, which is optimism, gaining more control over the contents of our consciousness. So there you go. That is a whirlwind quick look at this great book. Hope you enjoyed it. Check it out for more. Google Rick Hanson. Learn more about what he's up to. He also has a great conference with. Sounds True. That I'll link you to as well. But for now, take care of your future self. Get into the relaxation response. Make meditation a part of your life, even if just for a minute. Practice equanimity. Be unilaterally virtuous. Have your challenging chats videotaped in your mind and practice being mindful. Hope you dug it. Have another awesome day. Look forward to sharing more with you soon. See ya.

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