Is warmheartedness a source of well-being? Are human beings kind by nature? How can we activate a sense of connection with oneself and others? How can we make it a source of true happiness? How far can our inner qualities of love, compassion, joy, and so on be developed?

The Journey

The course “Wise paths to the heart” focuses on cultivating warmheartedness and prosocial attitudes, which are essential for human evolution, well-being, and flourishing. It presents the four immeasurable attitudes of loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity, as drawn from the Buddhist tradition, and explores the mind of awakening, which embraces all sentient beings. It is complemented by references to current scientific understanding on the nature and biological basis of altruism, empathy, compassion, and self-compassion.

The course gradually unfolds as a journey along different topics:

• Warmheartedness as a source of well-being explores whether warmheartedness is a source of well-being, with research on the nature of altruism and ethics, and on the biological basis of warmheartedness. We also explore whether it can be trained.
• To care for yourself to care for others starts by seeing how to take care of oneself, and how taking care of oneself also entails taking care—or connecting—with others.
• The four immeasurables works with specific aspects of warmheartedness and prosocial attitudes: the four immeasurable qualities of loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity. It also presents how to move from empathy to compassion.
• Warm heart fitness deepens into the four immeasurables, by exploring their relation with wisdom, and by finding ways to replace afflictions for the four immeasurables.
• The mind of awakening goes further to explore the possibility of fully developing our potential of warmheartedness and wisdom with the mind of awakening, which aims to attain enlightenment for the benefit of all beings.
• Alchemy of the heart presents unique and provoking approaches to cultivating such a mind with methods that allow us to gradually replace egoism and self-centeredness for altruism and awareness of others.

Buddhist Mind Science

This course belongs to the series of courses “Buddhist Mind Science: Activating Your Potential”, that offers practical knowledge and techniques about meditation, the mechanisms of suffering and happiness, how to find inner balance and how to discover and develop our potential as a person. The presentation includes references to scientific research. The different courses in the series can be taken separately. Read more.

Structure

The course will combine theoretical sessions, exercises and meditations. The format will be eminently practical.

Language

The course will be conducted in English with simultaneous translation into Spanish.

Co-Hosting Centers

Centre de meditació Tushita
Land of Joy, UK
Shantideva Center, USA

See an introduction to the series in the video above

Marina Brucet Vinyals was born in Barcelona, Spain. She has completed a six-year full-time study program Masters Program of Advanced Buddhist Studies of Sutra and Tantra at Lama Tzong Khapa Institute, Italy. She studied with great Tibetan lamas such as His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Lama Jampa Monlam and Khensur Jampa Tegchok, amongst others. She has also completed a one-year individual meditation retreat, amongst others.

She holds a BA and a MA in Biochemistry and a PhD in Molecular Biology in Immunology from the University of Barcelona, where she also performed postdoctoral studies.

Presently, she combines continual development and meditation retreats with teaching meditation and Buddhist philosophy, at both general and specialized levels, with an approach that always takes into account the context and circumstances of Western life.

Hans Burghardt holds a BA and a MA in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and a PhD from the University of Barcelona, where he spent seven years doing research. Since 2002, he meditates and is a student of great Buddhist masters including His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Kyabje Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Kirti Tsenshab Rinpoche, Lama Jampa Monlam, Khensur Jampa Tegchok amongst others. He has completed the Masters Program of Advanced Buddhist Studies of Sutra and Tantra at Istituto Lama Tzong Khapa (Italy) and has completed a one-year individual meditation retreat. He currently teaches meditation and Buddhism at Tushita Meditation Center Spain and other FPMT centers, and is co-founder and coordinator of the Initiative for an Emotional, Ethical, and Social Education, that promotes the establishment of Emory University’s SEE Learning in Spain.