In this inspiring and empowering conversation, Rick Hanson spells out how we can use positive, self-directed neuroplasticity to hardwire our brains in order to become happier, cultivate virtues, deal with cravings, become deeply grounded, turn our desired states into stable traits, and more.

Neurodharma is Rick’s conceptual creation: a marriage of neuroscience, psychology, and contemporary wisdom that offers individuals who are out to make a change for the better an impressive and effective brain hacking toolkit. Rick’s own gentle wisdom, compassion, clarity, kindness, and humor shine in this truly groundbreaking (for most of us) dialogue, making him a wonderful exemplar of the peaceful, loving, altruistic, and effective person practicing neurodharma can help us to become.

Recorded September 20, 2021.

Topics & Timestamps: Part 1

• Introducing Rick Hanson: kindness, books, philanthropy, forging the discipline of neurodharma (01:50)
• What are Rick’s most important takeaways from his life’s work? (05:35)
• Frictionless contentment: grounding unshakeable happiness in the body (05:52)
• We have the power to use our mind (direct our mental activity) to sustain lasting changes in the brain and we cannot escape the responsibility for using (or not using) this (08:41)
• Why do we need neuroscience when meditation does this anyway? (11:34)
• 3 benefits of grounding our practice in neuroscience (13:08)
• To provide sustained motivation (13:17)
• Gives us a common framework of enquiry that helps us operationalize when we’re doing our practices (13:56)
• Highlights the tools that correlate to each individual’s highest priority so they can zero in on what matters the most (15:05)
• Our brain’s negativity bias (16:26)
• How tuning into internal sensations helps steady our mind, stabilize attention, and pull us into the present (17:20)
• Helps identify new methods like neurofeedback (21:10)
• Knowing we are hard-wired to focus on negative experiences helps our own inner work, reducing guilt and extending our compassion (23:08)
• The challenge of stabilizing altered states into enduring traits (24:54)
• How to address craving: building the enduring trait of open-heartedness in the present using neuroplastic change (27:41)
• How do we anchor this? Rick leads a micro samadhi concentration practice (34:32)
• Deliberately resting in the felt sense of nothing wrong steepens your growth curve (41:31)
• Many of the beneficial traits we want to grow in ourselves involve states that aren’t actually that enjoyable. (44:55)

Topics & Timestamps: Part 2

• 2 major obstructions to speeding our growth (01:04)
• Gradual cultivation, sudden awakening, gradual cultivation (06:08)
• Bodhidhamma: practice is like a wagon with 2 wheels (06:39)
• What are the crucial qualities of heart and mind that are essential to cultivate? (10:32)
• Who has lit the fire in Rick’s heart? (12:48)
• Truly wise person: Peaceable, friendly, fearless (15:31)
• The importance of trusting our own minds (19:09)
• What are Rick’s daily practices? (22:26)
• Paying attention to the subtleties of craving (23:55)
• Focusing on a sustained felt sense of the ground of all; recognizing the extraordinary generosity of the arising moment (27:40)
• How does Rick understand the act of transmission? 29:16
• Reverse engineering desired qualities to yourself (31:39)
• What are Rick’s priorities for the future? (35:21)
• Self-directed neuroplasticity: 3 foundational practices (36:59)
• Re-establishing the 3 enabling conditions of healthy human politics (38:09)
• Playfulness, to include curiosity, makes us receptive to lasting change (41:08)

Resources & References

• Rick Hanson, author of Neurodharma, Resilient, Hardwiring Happiness, Buddha’s Brain, Just One Thing, and Mother Nurture*
• Founder of the Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom, whose mission is to offer skillful means for changing the brain to benefit the whole person and all beings in a world too full of war.
• Senior Fellow, the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley
• Spirit Rock meditation center board member
• Joseph Goldstein, American mindfulness teacher, co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society, author
• Evan Thompson, professor of philosophy, author of Why I Am Not a Buddhist, Mind in Life, and Waking, Dreaming, Being*
• T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding (poem)
• Huston Smith, religious scholar, The World’s Religions, quotes*
• Journal of Positive Psychology
• Milarepa, Tibetan sage and poet
• Shunryu Suzuki-roshi, Zen monk and teacher who founded the first Zen Buddhist monastery outside of Asia
• Bodhidharma, Buddhist monk credited with bringing Buddhism to China
• Ram Dass, Life in Balance: A Path to Equanimity and Peace
• Joseph Goldstein, American mindfulness teacher
• Thich Nhat Han, Vietnamese monk, exemplar of embodied wisdom, peace activist
• Christina Feldman, Boundless Heart*
• Tara Brach, Trusting the Gold*
• Carl Rogers, pioneering humanist psychologist
• Rick Hanson, author of Neurodharma, Resilient, Hardwiring Happiness, Buddha’s Brain, Just One Thing, and Mother Nurture*
• Founder of the Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom, whose mission is to offer skillful means for changing the brain to benefit the whole person and all beings in a world too full of war.

* As an Amazon Associate, Deep Transformation earns from qualifying purchases.
Podcast produced by Vanessa Santos

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