The brain - cause and cure of suffering

All animals, including us, have evolved three strategies to help pass on their genes. The animal tries to:

Separate what is actually connected, in order to create a boundary between itself and the world

Stabilize what keeps changing, in order to maintain it's internal systems within tight ranges

Hold onto fleeting (flüchtige) pleasures and escape inevitable pains, in order to approach opportunities and avoid threats

For sheer survival, these strategies work great. Whenever a strategy runs into trouble, uncomfortable (sometimes even agonizing) alarm signals pulse through the nervous system to set the animal back on track.

Whilst trouble comes all the time, most animals don't have nervous systems complex enough to allow these strategies' alarms to grow into significant distress. But our vastly more developed brain is fertile ground for a harvest of suffering.

Only we humans worry about the future, regret the past, and blame ourself for the present. We get frustrated when we can't have what we want, and disappointed when what we like ends. We suffer that we suffer. We get upset about being in pain, angry about dying, sad about waking up sad yet another day.

This kind of suffering - which encompasses most of our unhappiness and dissatisfaction - is constructed by the brain. It is made up. This is ironic, poignant (schmerzlich) - and supremely hopeful, for if the brain is the cause of suffering, it can also be its cure.

(from Rick Hanson: Buddha's Brain)