My goal in this chapter and the next is to convince you that the conventional sense of self is an illusion—and that spirituality largely consists in realizing this, moment to moment.

How could someone’s happiness increase when all the material sources of pleasure and distraction had been removed?

Our minds are all we have. They are all we have ever had. And they are all we can offer others.

How we pay attention to the present moment largely determines the character of our experience and, therefore, the quality of our lives.

The word spirit comes from the Latin spiritus, which is a translation of the Greek pneuma, meaning “breath.”

Our conventional sense of self is an illusion; positive emotions, such as compassion and patience, are teachable skills; and the way we think directly influences our experience of the world.

Spirituality must be distinguished from religion—because people of every faith, and of none, have had the same sorts of spiritual experiences.

Confusion and suffering may be our birthright, but wisdom and happiness are available.

Is there a form of happiness beyond the mere repetition of pleasure and avoidance of pain? Is there a happiness that does not depend upon having one’s favorite foods available, or friends and loved ones within arm’s reach, or good books to read, or something to look forward to on the weekend?

Is it possible to be happy before anything happens, before one’s desires are gratified, in spite of life’s difficulties, in the very midst of physical pain, old age, disease, and death?

Here is its logic: If there exists a source of psychological well-being that does not depend upon merely gratifying one’s desires, then it should be present even when all the usual sources of pleasure have been removed.

Any athlete knows that certain kinds of pain can be exquisitely pleasurable. The burn of lifting weights, for instance, would be excruciating if it were a symptom of terminal illness. But because it is associated with health and fitness, most people find it enjoyable.

Whatever the context, our minds are perpetually moving—generally toward pleasure (or its imagined source) and away from pain.

Our pleasures, however refined or easily acquired, are by their very nature fleeting.

It is impossible for any faith, no matter how elastic, to fully honor the truth claims of another.

Religion is a term like sports: Some sports are peaceful but spectacularly dangerous (“free solo” rock climbing); some are safer but synonymous with violence (mixed martial arts); and some entail little more risk of injury than standing in the shower (bowling).

One can speak about Buddhism shorn of its miracles and irrational assumptions. The same cannot be said of Christianity or Islam.

Despite the superstitions that many Buddhists cherish, the doctrine has a practical and logical core that does not require any unwarranted assumptions.

Unlike the doctrines of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the teachings of Buddhism are not considered by their adherents to be the product of infallible revelation. They are, rather, empirical instructions: If you do X, you will experience Y.

The fact that your mind is all you have and that it is possible to be at peace even in difficult circumstances can become an argument for ignoring obvious societal problems.

There is now little question that how one uses one’s attention, moment to moment, largely determines what kind of person one becomes. Our minds—and lives—are largely shaped by how we use them.

My purpose in writing this book is to encourage you to investigate certain contemplative insights for yourself, without accepting the metaphysical ideas that they inspired in ignorant and isolated peoples of the past.

The reality of your life is always now.

We often fail to appreciate what we have until we have lost it.

For beginners, I usually recommend a technique called vipassana (Pali for “insight”), which comes from the oldest tradition of Buddhism, the Theravada.

The quality of mind cultivated in vipassana is almost always referred to as “mindfulness,” and the literature on its psychological benefits is now substantial.

Cultivating this quality of mind has been shown to reduce pain, anxiety, and depression; improve cognitive function; and even produce changes in gray matter density in regions of the brain related to learning and memory, emotional regulation, and self-awareness.

When one compares Buddhist texts with the Bible or the Koran, the difference is unmistakable: The Satipatthana Sutta is not a collection of ancient myths, superstitions, and taboos; it is a rigorously empirical guide to freeing the mind from suffering.

The four foundations of mindfulness are the body (breathing, changes in posture, activities), feelings (the senses of pleasantness, unpleasantness, and neutrality), the mind (its moods and attitudes), and the objects of mind (which include the five senses but also other mental states and even mindfulness itself.

Being mindful is not a matter of thinking more clearly about experience; it is the act of experiencing more clearly, including the arising of thoughts themselves.

The principal enemy of mindfulness—or of any meditative practice—is our deeply conditioned habit of being distracted by thoughts.

The problem is not thoughts themselves but the state of thinking without knowing that we are thinking.

Mindfulness meditation is extraordinarily simple to describe, but it isn’t easy to perform.

Even for extraordinarily lucky people, life is difficult. And when we look at what makes it so, we see that we are all prisoners of our thoughts.

The traditional goal of meditation is to arrive at a state of well-being that is imperturbable—or if perturbed, easily regained.

It seems to me that a healthy spiritual life can begin only once our physical, mental, social, and ethical lives have sufficiently matured.

Your mind is the basis of everything you experience and of every contribution you make to the lives of others.

Given our social requirements, we know that the deepest and most durable forms of well-being must be compatible with an ethical concern for other people—even for complete strangers—otherwise, violent conflict becomes inevitable.

In my view, the realistic goal to be attained through spiritual practice is not some permanent state of enlightenment that admits of no further efforts but a capacity to be free in this moment, in the midst of whatever is happening.

The birth of consciousness must be the result of organization: Arranging atoms in certain ways appears to bring about an experience of being that very collection of atoms. This is undoubtedly one of the deepest mysteries given to us to contemplate

Consciousness is the one thing in this universe that cannot be an illusion.

But we can now say that any conception of our place in the universe that denies we evolved from more primitive life forms is pure delusion.

In humans, the left hemisphere generally makes a unique contribution to language and to the performance of complex movements.

The question of whether the right hemisphere is conscious is really a pseudo-mystery used to bar the door to a great one: the uncanny fact that the human mind can be divided with a knife.

The right hemisphere is dominant for many higher cognitive abilities, both in normal brains and in those that have been surgically divided.

Much of what makes us human is generally accomplished by the right side of the brain.

Consciousness—whatever its relation to neural events—is divisible.The evidence is overwhelming, however, that such unity, if it ever exists in a human being, depends upon some humble tracts of white matter crossing the midline of the brain.

The point of view from which you are consciously reading these words may not be the only conscious point of view to be found in your brain.

A person’s experience of the world, while apparently unified in a normal brain, can be physically divided.