In a group setting, Rick discusses empathy and 3 fundamental circuits as well as challenges to empathy.
Rick Hanson
Author / Psychologist
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Biography
Rick Hanson, Ph.D. is a psychologist, Senior Fellow at UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, and New York Times best-selling author. His seven books have been published in 33 languages, and include Making Great Relationships, Neurodharma, Resilient, Hardwiring Happiness, Just One Thing, Buddha’s Brain, and Mother Nurture – with over a million copies in English alone. He's the founder of the Global Compassion Coalition and the Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom, as well as the co-host of the Being Well Podcast – which has been downloaded over 15 million times. His free newsletters have over 260,000 subscribers and his online programs have scholarships available for those in need. He’s lectured at NASA, Google, Oxford, and Harvard. An expert on positive neuroplasticity, his work has been featured on CBS, NPR, the BBC, and other major media. He began meditating in 1974 and has taught in meditation centers worldwide. He and his wife live in Northern California and have two adult children. He loves the wilderness and taking a break from emails.
Articles
Train Your Brain: Filling Your Body’s Cupboard
Take charge of the biochemistry – in your own body – that is the physical basis of your well-being and your capacity for contemplative practice.
Train Your Brain: Awareness of Your Body
Awareness of the body has been a fundamental practice within most contemplative traditions. The body as a temple, the body as a source of beauty, the body as repulsive, the body as transitory—all of these concepts have had their place in spiritual practices.
Continuity of Mindfulness
Any mindfulness is a good thing. It’s one of the seven factors of enlightenment and the one that catalyzes the others – so the more mindfulness, the better.
Ways to Deepen Householder Practice
The Buddha taught that complete enlightenment was possible for householders and monastics alike. It’s wonderful news that ordinary activities such as going to work, raising a family, driving in traffic, paying bills, raking the leaves, etc. are not inherent barriers to complete freedom, joy, love, and inner peace.
In this audio from the San Rafael Meditation Group, I talk about what it’s like to be you and what supports you.
Rick continues his talk on what supports you.
Knowing and Living the Truth: The Perfection of Wisdom
Wisdom (sometimes called “discernment”) is one of the ten “paramis” or perfections of a Bodhisattva, an Awakened person who postpones their ultimate enlightenment to bring all beings to liberation.
Know Where You Stand
We need to know the facts: is the stove turned off, do I have health insurance, does my partner love me, are the people who work for me getting the job done? We also need to know our values: what is fair, decent, good, and proper.
The Noble Eightfold Path
The Eightfold Path is the fourth of the Buddha’s Noble Truths, and he described it as the way that leads to the uprooting of the causes of suffering, and thus to increasingly stable and profound peacefulness, wisdom, virtue, and happiness.
How Does Buddhism Intersect with Neuroplasticity and an Ambitious Life?
Foundations of the Noble Eightfold Path
The Eightfold Path is the fourth of the Noble Truths: the truths of suffering, its cause, its ending, and the path to its ending.