# Siddharta's Brain Author: [[James Kingsland]] ## Review This is a great introduction to meditation and mindfulness for someone (like myself) who has little knowledge of the topic. This is a great first book if you are curious to find out what evidence and benefits are, and how to get get started. Compared to many other areas of scientific research, mindfulness and meditation have a long history of study and observation, based on ancient spiritual and religious practices. The author seamlessly weaves together modern scientific ideas with ancient Buddhist stories, to tell a compelling story on the advantages of meditation practice. Since the 60s scientists have been investigating meditation as a therapeutic tool. The scientific evidence he cites, which has been increasing in size and scope, suggests meditation is a useful tool for mental health problems such as anxiety, depression, addiction and OCD. From my perspective, the core ideas of recent cognitive behavioral therapies seem to come straight from Buddhist practices. The practice of bringing your attention to the sensations in your body helps to deactivate narrative construction (default mode network?) in your brain. With time you strengthen your ability to redirect attention more easily and retain focus. The narratives we tell about ourselves can be the cause of the greatest suffering. In my mind the ability to shut down your narrative machine relates to Buddhist ideas of detachment. The relationship between meditation & detachment and the size/activation of certain brain areas was very interesting and motivates me to learn more about the brain. Toward the end of the book the author describes a conversation with a Buddhist monk who is grateful for secularization of some Buddhist practices but believes that science is behind on some of the other aspects of Buddhism. It's interesting to consider the mental health effects of ethical behaviour as implied by the monk. For me to dig deeper into this topic my next steps are going to be: - grounding myself in a better understanding of the brain so that I can begin to understand why this works. - practicing meditation for a while to understand how meditation works and interacts with my daily habits. ## Key Ideas ## Related