Q: If you focus on the positive for long enough, does it actually make your brain more receptive to doing that? Turn it into “velcro” for happiness, to use your expression? A: Research shows that repeated practice of any positive behavior (e.g., gratitude) will...

Here we give up angry, punishing reactions toward others, animals, plants, and things. If such attitudes arise, we resolve not to feed them, and to cut them off as fast as we can. The Buddha placed great stress on the importance of releasing ill will. In the extreme,...

Is the “Self” real? What’s the nature of the sense of being that remains when parts of the psyche fall away? The answer depends on how you define “Self.”  I use that word to refer to the central “I” that’s presumed in Western psychology and philosophy (and everyday...

Your brain is the product of 3.5 billion years of intense evolutionary pressure, including 2.7 million years as tool-using hominids and over 100,000 years as homo sapiens. Human DNA is about 98-99% identical to chimpanzee DNA. But that crucial 1-2% difference is...

What is the Best Time of Day to Meditate? In all the studies (and reviews of studies) I’ve seen on meditation, I’ve never seen anything scientific about best time of day to meditate. Maybe it exists, but I’ve never heard of it. From the standpoint of a long-time...

Did you know? Neurons typically fire 5 – 50 times a second, with millions and even billions of them pulsing in harmony with each other many times a second; the electrical currents of that pulsing are revealed as brain waves in an EEG. In the half second it takes you...

This is a broad aim of not causing pain, loss, or destruction to any living thing. At a minimum, this is a sweeping resolution to avoid any whit of harm to another human being. The implications are far-reaching, since most of us participate daily in activities whose...

Of course, the first question regarding intention is, for what? All the great wisdom traditions of the world, and all the great moral philosophers, have grappled with this question. What should we want? There are many ways to approach this question. Some try to answer...