In 1992, His Holiness a Dalai Lama encouraged neuroscientist Richard J. Davidson to turn his laboratory’s tools—brain-scanning technologies developed to study cognitive disorders—toward the positive qualities of the mind: compassion, wisdom, and kindness. For Davidson, it was a shift in direction that would define the next three decades of his career.
Davidson, also a psychologist, initially specialized in depression, anxiety and stress, rather than the solution-oriented approach that has since made his reputation synonymous with mental health. As the founder and director of the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he pioneered practical exercises that not only maintain mental well-being, but also develop the brain’s innate ability to flourish. Born to bloom with co-author Cortland J. DahlContemplative Scholar at the Center for Healthy Minds and Co-Founder and Executive Director of Tergar International, a global meditation community.
In his heart Born to bloom a quartet of practices—awareness, connection, insight, and purpose—that can be called the four noble truths of flourishing. Which turns out a simple set of exercises that people can do while juggling family and work schedules. The authors are precise about the timing: 4.5 minutes per day to reap real benefits and improve overall well-being. For example, as part of one of her morning appreciation exercises, they she advises thinking about a loved one while you brush your teeth to start a lifelong rhythm of bonding.
The authors are equally direct about the central obstacle to flourishing: distraction. Relying on the studies of Harvard psychologists Matt Killingsworth and Dan Gilbert, they note that the average person is distracted for 46.9 percent of their waking life – only about half.
Distraction is toxic. It can destroy moments of genuine human connection, undermine a productive workflow or a moment of creative insight, and even make a challenging moment more challenging.
While this may seem like an obvious or redundant criticism, its true fruit Born to bloom the practical mentality that the authors convey and the discipline to focus on it. During a conversation with the Dalai Lama, Dahl asked, “Should we incorporate Buddhist principles such as impermanence and interdependence into our training program?” The Dalai Lama shook his head. “No, no… don’t do it. It’s a Buddhist matter!”
WIn prescriptive prose that sometimes reads like mantric affirmations in a self-help manual, Davidson and Dahl nevertheless clearly and patiently make their main point: empirical science demonstrates the immediate and ameliorative effects of kindness, not only as outward attention to others, but also as an inner drive to improve oneself.
Still, the apparent simplicity of kindness is deceptive. The Dalai Lama famously said that kindness is his religion, his demand Born to bloom he takes it seriously and bases it on the studies of advanced meditators who have practiced for over 30,000 hours. Here is Dahl’s expertise as an author A Meditator’s Guide to Buddhism shine. Together, Davidson and Dahl shed light on popular approaches to meditation that ignore the ritualistic cultivation of compassion from which they emerged.
Citing brain imaging analyzes to understand what sets advanced meditators apart, Davidson and Dahl supplement their deliberate exposition with a generous dose of lay neuroscience. Empathy is a neuronal phenomenon, they explain, and altruistic behavior activates the brain’s mirror neuron system—regions associated with empathy—while strengthening self-regulation and our ability to respond healthily to suffering.
Although Davidson and Dahl rooted their findings in Western science rather than Buddhist faith, the latter provides consistent, motivating inspiration. After neuroscience supported their belief—that the means of flourishing could be reliably replicated in practice—it was time to standardize their findings for general use.
“As little as five minutes a day of mindful practice can help you reach your full potential for flourishing,” the authors write, noting that positive mindfulness, even during the most mundane chores or worst personal crises, can induce epigenetic changes and increase brain plasticity.
Davidson and Dahl pay the same analytical attention to their own lives, referring to themselves in the third person as Richie and Cort, respectively. With unwavering attention to the small components of everyday life, they mine their morning routines for alertness, and are grateful for their wives’ attention to the reciprocity of coexistence.
Born to bloom clearly illustrates that even in Davidson’s seventy-three-hour work week, there is plenty of room to develop all four pillars of flourishing at every moment. A simple thank you to Davidson’s wife, Susan, for making his morning porridge and boiling water for tea, blossoms into a single-minded mindset that has defined Davidson’s career.
Similarly, for Dahl, his wife Kasumi is not only a reliable partner in marriage, but also on the path to prosperity. As part of their nightly ritual, they commit to an intention practice where they think of a person, situation, or memory and share three things they appreciate about it, turning unconscious pre-sleep habits into tools for flourishing. The key here is that normalities and legalities, in contrast to the domestic monotony from which many in the West fled to remote monastic retreats awaiting enlightenment, are fertile ground for the extraction of the sweetness of blossoming, to use the authors’ expression. They write:
One day you will find yourself practicing the skill of flourishing without deciding if you can do it. It will just happen. And when these habits start to happen spontaneously, you will feel the sweet taste of blossoming.
LThe authors emphasize that being alone reduces brain metabolism, especially those related to planning and decision-making. Then properly Born to bloom a powerful community effort. In addition to Davidson, Dahl and their wives, a diverse group of characters appear in the book to illuminate and systematize the science of flowering. The most colorful are Davidson’s colleagues at the Center for Healthy Minds.
Either in line with research at the Max Planck Institute in Germany (where Tania Singer discovered how introspection strengthens emotion regulation), or on a meditative walk with French Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard in Bhutan, or Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, Born to bloom resonates with experiential learning based on dialogue and community. Davidson’s colleague Pelin Kesebir and her sister Selin, social psychologists at the Center for Healthy Minds, add another dimension by analyzing millions of digitized 20th-century American books to track how often terms like virtue, honesty, and compassion appeared in the culture and how dramatically they declined.
Mingyur Rinpoche was instrumental in developing the research on flowering that brought Davidson and Dahl together. As a student of Mingyur Rinpoche in India and Nepal, Dahl became accustomed to his teacher’s talents as a precocious meditator who had already dedicated himself to several years of practice in his twenties. In Kathmandu, Dahl attended retreats and translated Buddhist texts into English under his guidance. Based on the results of Mingyur Rinpoche’s fMRI tests in the United States, Davidson draws fundamental conclusions about the nature of thoughts, attention, emotions, and distraction.
(…) it was clear that Rinpoche and other advanced meditators had strengthened their awareness (a fundamental dimension of flourishing) to the point that they could intentionally control their attention, emotional reactions, and thought activity.
Simplifying the results, distraction can be thought of as a form of suffering. And the authors clearly see the structural reasons for this: We live in an attention-grabbing economy, in which the big tech conglomerates’ stake is a lack of awareness and connection, which causes disinformation and isolation. A capitalist healthcare system that profits from the spread of physical and mental illness is not neutral ground for the cultivation of flourishing.
While the neuroscience of compassion ritualization is still in its infancy, Davidson and Dahl are leading a wave of research showing that kindness is an innate trait that promotes mental health. If there is one caveat, it is that the authors fall into laboratory abstractions. The brain does not exist in isolation, and if the challenges to flourishing remain overly active in a society dominated by consumer capitalism, the majority will continue to be compromised by the vulnerability inherent in the sensitivity of the human brain.
With his careful language, even with the act of reading Born to bloom it becomes possible for the reader to find purpose by honing what the authors call a “meta-awareness” of the text on the page. Drawing from the common well of neuroscience and Buddhism, Davidson and Dahl have written an honest and uplifting book in which each letter that transforms into a thought offers a new opportunity to flourish. The brain essentially perceives everyday life not as a minefield of terrifying distractions, but as fertile ground from which kindness can grow, rooting everything in the solid ground of shared, lived experience.
