UNDERSTANDING HAPPINESS:
SCIENCE AND THE BUDDHA
Understanding Happiness: Science and the Buddha (UHSB) is a professional, academic project consisting of a six-episode podcast and a research report.
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It's fundamentally about helping people understand what happiness is and how to achieve it. UHSB is an interdisciplinary project: it integrates modern research and scientific evidence with millennia of human belief systems, philosophies, and cultural insights. The intersections between these approaches, representing the most reliable and well-rounded information available, are then examined and their insights communicated.
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UHSB is about constructing a new worldview to facilitate the happiness, wisdom, and self-awareness of both individuals and society. This necessitates a broad scope, and UHSB explores happiness; human nature; evolution; the human brain, mind, and body; morality; religion; emotions; meaning; self-actualisation; self-transcendence; and more. All of these topics are explored from scientific and philosophical perspectives, drawing on the author’s personal research.
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That research stretches over half a decade and involves over 100 books, medical school lectures, academic textbooks, and countless articles. All the topics UHSB explores are things that I've personally endeavoured to understand for my own mental health, and I want to contribute to making the world a happier place by sharing what I've learned with others.
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The scientific paper I wrote elaborates further on the objectives and meaning of UHSB. It also contains a formal literature search, methodically examining scientific databases, to discuss the phenomenon of self-transcendence, which is one of the key pieces of the happiness puzzle.
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Links to all relevant materials are on the right.
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Click on the image to open the Spotify page​
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Podcast episodes:
(Click on the text to open the Spotify link)
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Episode 0/5 - Introduction: What have you just found?
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Episode 1/5 - The Self-Aware Ape: Understanding ourselves
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Episode 2/5 - Natural Selection and the Ten Percent Bee: Why/how happiness exists
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Episode 3/5 - The Anatomy of Joy: What happiness is
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Episode 4/5 - The Final Formula for Happiness: Achieving happiness
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Episode 5/5 - The Meaning of Life: Achieving meaning
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Scientific report:
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List of source books::
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