Transforming the Mind to Cultivate Lasting Happiness with Elaine Jackson

#### Transforming the Mind

Are we free to choose what we pay attention to? How to be able to choose? Can we increase our mental balance? How 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.

“Transforming the mind to cultivate lasting happiness” gradually unfolds as a journey along different topics:

1. Settling the mind and focusing attention with the breath explains breathing meditation to settle the mind and focus our attention, as a way to choose where we pay attention to and balance the mind.
2. Stabilizing and analytical meditation challenges some common notions about meditation and explores how to use our capacity to observe and analyze to enhance wholesome mental states and attitudes.
3. Working with emotions explores emotions, how some of them can be challenging or disturbing, and strategies to work with them.
4. Emotions and afflictions further deepens into it by presenting the Buddhist perspective on emotions and afflictions.
5. A healthy emotional life explores how regulating emotions is not only about dealing with the challenging ones, but also about gaining perspective over our own views and enhancing wholesome emotions and mental states.
6. Bringing the practice to daily life concludes with bringing more awareness to our emotions and to activities in daily life.

https://www.gyalwagyatso.org/events/2025-04-27-bms-2/