The first person to discover Nirvana was a prince in India 400 years before Christ. His name was Siddhartha and he discovered Nirvana while sitting under a tree through contemplative meditation. Then there is brain scientist Jill Bolte Taylor in the modern world of today who during during a stroke to the left hemisphere of her brain experienced nirvana.

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This documentary shows archaeologists uncovering the history of Buddha. Buddha was a prince in India 400 years BC by the name of Siddhartha. In his teens, he went outside the insular palace walls and discovered there was great suffering in the world such as old age, disease, and death. He journeyed in the lands as well as in his mind to find answers to the end of such sufferings and discovered it through contemplative meditation while sitting under a tree. There he reached nirvana and became Buddha, the “awakened one”. This was the start of the Buddhism.

Professor Dan Ariely who studies behvioral economics explains some of our behavior that seems counter-intuitive in these videos…

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This report shows that there are is a dip in happiness in during midlife. And this is true for people in countries all over the world. Could this be a contributing factor in mid-life crisis?

This is the story of Daniel Tammet, an autistic savant with Asperger’s syndrome who can do complex math in his head and can learn languages at an extraordinary rate.

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Matthieu Ricard, a Buddhist monk, gives an enlightening lecture at Google about our inner state that affects our happiness. He is the author of the book, See Happiness: A Guide to Life’s Most Important Skill.

In this one hour video, Professor Barry Schwartz explains why too much choice is not always good. This is a paradoxical concept since western belief is that more choice means more freedom and happiness.

At about 45 minutes into this video, Schwartz comments on the effect of money on happiness. He says that …”What is true is that once you cross subsistence, whatever subsistence is in your society, additional increases in wealth have virtually no effect on well-being. There is a hugh steep curve going from zero to subsistence. But once you cross that line of subsistence, the curve flattens out. It is worth knowing, in case you have a choice between choosing x and making more money, almost certainly choosing x is what you should choose.”

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Daniel Gilbert, author of the book Stumbling on Happiness, claims that the “impact bais” causes people to over-estimate the amount that events will affect people’s happiness. Gilbert is a psychology professor at Harvard University. He suggests that “synthetic happiness” is just as good as “authentic happiness”.