in your brain, loving-kindness mobilizes prefrontal language and intention networks as well as limbic emotion and reward networks. - Rick Hanson

One way the self grows is by equating itself to things — by identifying with them. Unfortunately, when you identify with something, you make its fate your own — and yet, everything in this world ultimately ends. So be mindful of how you identify with positions, objects, and people.

It’s sometimes said that the greatest remaining scientific questions are: What caused the Big Bang? What is the grand unified theory that integrates quantum mechanics and general relativity? And what is the relationship between the mind and the brain, especially regarding conscious experience?

It’s a remarkable fact that the people who have gone the very deepest into the mind — the sages and saints of every religious tradition — all say essentially the same thing: your fundamental nature is pure, conscious, peaceful, radiant, loving, and wise, and it is joined in mysterious ways with the ultimate underpinnings of reality, by whatever name we give That.