From the Blog

With all the research on mind/brain connections these days – Your brain in lust or love! While gambling or feeling envious! While meditating, praying, or having an out-of-body experience! – it’s natural to wonder about Big Questions about the relationships among the...

One could rightly ask: How can intangible thoughts affect tangible matter (i.e., the brain)? This question is at the heart of the longstanding “mind-body problem,” and related questions include: How can mind arise from matter? Is mind reducible to matter? Does matter...

Find answers on how to break negative thinking patterns and more.

Set aside a quiet time during which you can reflect on some of the many things you could be thankful for. As a starting point, you might read the passage below to yourself or out loud, adapting it to your situation as you like. There really is so much to be thankful...

As you probably know, compassion and lovingkindness are central elements of Buddhism. They arise naturally in response to one of those three fundamental characteristics of existence: interdependence/not-self/emptiness. They are also a beautiful path of spiritual...

#1 The mind and the brain are mainly (and perhaps entirely) a single unified system. Almost every – and perhaps every – subjective state is correlated with an objective, material brain state. Other than a transcendental factor – call it God, Spirit, Energy, or by...

  Every day, think as you wake up: Today I am fortunate to have woken up. I am alive, I have a precious human life. I am not going to waste it. ~The Dalai Lama To make the most of your life, to nourish the causes of happiness for yourself and others, it takes...

"How does being-awareness relate to our underlying animal nature?" "Is remorse a good thing?" "Is the “Self” real? What’s the nature of the sense of being that remains when parts of the psyche fall away?" These questions about self-awareness are just a sampling of...

This collection of scientific papers was created by the Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom.

We can outwit our brain’s negative circuitry and tilt ourselves toward the good in life. The inner strengths we all need to cope with life and enjoy it – strengths like resilience, positive emotions, confidence, and feeling loved – are based on underlying neural...

The old-fashioned saying that “practice makes perfect” is true for one’s well-being and relationships. Picking just one thing to think about or do in your mind each day helps make the practice easier. Keep it simple. But stick with it. For example, drawing on a few...

Keeping with tradition, each year I offer a list of  Twelve Good Things. I've paired each good thing with a fundamental inner strength: Learning, Mindfulness, Love, Resilience, Contentment, Integrity, Self-Worth, Courage, Social Intelligence, Motivation, Wisdom, and...

I was a speaker at the Meditative Praxis conference at the University of Hong Kong in August 2013, where I interviewed on "Neurodharma: A New Way of Healing". Here's the video:

A "buddha brain" is one that knows how to be deeply happy, loving, and wise. We develop ourselves in this way by cultivating wholesome qualities and uprooting unwholesome ones. In a sense, we plant flowers and pull weeds in the garden of the mind - which means that we...

The holidays are a time of year when our stress-levels tend to rise, despite our desire to enjoy the season and the people in our lives. So I’d like to offer you a few simple tips for taking care of your body, emotions, thoughts and actions, to minimize holiday stress...

The Mindfulness Movie is a powerful and fascinating exploration of the essence and modern applications of mindfulness practices.

What does it mean to have a simple holiday? For me it means having realistic expectations about what you can actually get done, and not over-committing. Alongside, keeping a sense of perspective and humor about the madness of parking lot traffic jams, weird in-law...