Transforming the Mind to Cultivate Lasting Happiness
with Marina Vinyals and Hans Burghardt
Are we free to choose what we pay attention to? How to be able to choose? Can we increase our mental balance? How to be able to live a healthy emotional life?
We will explore such questions from an experiential point of view, using both scientific and Buddhist knowledge of the mind and meditation, in a journey that may translate into increasing lasting happiness and a positive impact on oneself, others, and the world.
The course “Transforming the mind to cultivate lasting happiness” explores what meditation is and focuses on calming the mind and refining attention with the breath, a healthy emotional life, and enhancing wholesome emotions and mental states as first foundations for cultivating lasting happiness. It is complemented by references to current scientific understanding on attention training, well-being, empathy, and emotions.
This short course is a part of the FPMT Buddhist Mind Science: Activating Your Potential series, which introduces the Buddhist knowledge of the mind and meditation to provide practical techniques and insight on the mechanisms of suffering and happiness, finding purpose and mental balance, and how to discover and activate our inner potential for warm heartedness and wisdom, all in harmony with a comparative modern scientific perspective and with the aim to contribute to the welfare in this world.
- Syllabus/Presentation of Course (PDF)
This program is offered jointly by:
About the Teachers
Marina Brucet Vinyals holds a BA an a MA in Biochemistry and a PhD in Molecular Biology in Immunology from the University of Barcelona, where she also performed postdoctoral studies. After this, she decided to change research in the laboratory for research of the mind and its possibilities. To this aim, she 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, and has completed a one-year individual meditation retreat, among others. 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. She mainly teaches at Tushita Meditation Center Spain and other FPMT centers, and collaborates with SEE Learning (Emory University) in Spain.
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.
