Joel Snape at The Guardian:
By some metrics, Buddhist monk Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche is the happiest man on Earth. In brain scans, researchers noted that Mingyur’s neural activity showed off-the-charts levels of activation in the left prefrontal cortex, an area associated with positive emotions such as happiness, enthusiasm and joy. In other tests conducted when he was 41 years old, his brain reportedly “resembled that of a 33-year-old”. He also laughs a lot.
Can happiness be taught? I met Mingyur (Rinpoche is an honorary title meaning, roughly, “precious one”) to discover his strategies for a richer life.
“As the Dalai Lama says, we have everything at the touch of a finger, and so when we start to feel lonely, incomplete, bored – we protect ourselves with whatever: eating ice-cream, our smartphone, coffee,” says Mingyur. “We try to get away from them, but those feelings are wisdom, in a way. The really important thing is to sit with them, embrace them as a path to explore.”
For instance, if you find yourself bored while watching a Netflix romcom and simultaneously scrolling on your phone, that’s a signal that ever more stimulation will never be satisfying (science backs this up: one recent study suggests flicking between videos on social media makes us more bored, not less). Take it as a sign to switch everything off, look inward and stop trying to fill the vacuum with superficial stuff.
More here.
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