A book with a bottom line very deep down. I suppose that any work with the word “neuroscience” in it is bound to be complex sooner or later, but I wasn’t expecting exactly this. Not that I’m completely displeased. Despite some flaws, Buddha's Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom is a good book. Let me explain.
Authors Drs. Rick Hanson and Richard Mendius present us with a tour de force of evolutionary neurophysiology, psychology, and sociology, matched each with descriptions of how each evolutionary development impacted the way we perceive, process, and “feel” data. Many sentences consist of existential statements followed by detailed word maps of illuminated neuropaths. E.g., “Suffering cascades through your body via the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) and the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPAA) of the endocrine (hormonal) system.” The word chain conjured old images of my 6th and 7th grade anatomy classes out of my memory, no doubt residing in long unused neurons.
I don’t want to fault the authors too much. Making the nook-and-crannies of the nervous system intelligible to the lay person is a tough call, but I think they should’ve made a better effort at it, to a avoid that their book, intended to relief suffering and its causes, actually became the causes of one.
The book is divided into and introduction and four parts, titled each “The Causes of Suffering,” “Happiness,” “Love” and “wisdom”. The first part is the one most heavy on the neuroscientific lingo. It tends to slim down in the next three parts thankfully but by them the authors probably assume that the reader has the necessary basics to make the connections between human neurology and meditation. Uh, no.
I would’ve written this book differently, but then again, I am not a brain researcher. Nevertheless, I would’ve thrown in the neurological nitty-gritty into an appendix and textually linked obscure terms to the appendix or to a glossary, full with diagrams. My emphasis would’ve been on Buddhist meditation and its neurological effects rather than a tour-de-force of multidisciplinary evolutionary science embedded in a book about Buddhism. What that means is that Part I was the least effective, except maybe for evolution-enthusiasts and anatomists who want a spiritual validation to their scientific quests. Also, I would’ve avoided the inline sourcing (Author, Page) and simply end noted the reference. This kind of footnoting is very distracting outside of scholarly works where one expects them, but they are less effective in a work for the general public.
Bottom line: a good book, but not one to take as light reading. What did I learn? I learned more about the standard Buddhist teaching on suffering, its causes, and its relief, and how all these affect brain chemistry and general wellbeing. Throw in an appendix on a well-brain diet and the book is completed, and so is this review.
- Purchase Buddha's Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom at Amazon.
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