Written with an inviting, warm-hearted voice, this creative and helpful integration of neuroscience and attachment theory gives us new ways to think and feel about mindfulness, transformation - and ourselves. Rick Hanson, Ph.D. Author of Buddha's Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love & Wisdom Most everyone is familiar with what the author calls 'the two attachments'. These are: biological, maternal attachment on the one hand, and that which anchors of Buddhism's Four Noble Truths on the other. Famously Buddha declared attachment as the cause of suffering. Two millennia later, British psychoanalyst, John Bowlby began a revolution in psychology with his pioneering work on attachment. In recent years, the science of primate and human affection, caring, and intimacy has blossomed into nothing less than the neurobiology of love. The return of love as our evolutionary inheritance finds companionship with Buddha’s compassion. Buddha and Bowlby speak to the selfsame truths. But these remain disparate and muddled, with much confusion, for example, around detachment and nonattachment. In the name of spirit and science, patriarchy has distorted both by marginalizing yin, the feminine. For example, consider that Buddha's biological mom has to die almost immediately after his birth leaving him, the narrative suggests, to be raised by an ancillary, stepmother figure. One might prefer to think otherwise but as recent events continue to prove, the war on facts and the feminine is more than an ancient curiosity. Through this darkness, a clear and bright view of the feminine principle in nature is possible. She is, factually, unstoppable. His stepmother in time successfully pestered her son to allow women into the first sangha. Buddha’s Mom is a most welcome arena for this encounter with the feminine principle. In her love, we witness how Siddhartha, the baby, child, and man comes to wrestle with their love, with human love, and finally, gives the world the Dharma. Buddha's Mom embodies the neurobiology of these affective substrates. She spans from our mammalian origins to the ultimate meaning her son discovered and shared. Through her, what Dr. Schroder calls the 'human lineage' – the very flow of sentience itself, what it means to be alive, the lifeforce in each of us – all these gain in precision and clarity. Ultimately, this tender, scholarly meditation achieves a blending and then transcending of science and spirit. The clearest resolution arises in the mirror of Tibetan Buddhism. With this, many of Buddha’s and Buddhism’s supreme moments stop us in our tracks. These include the austerities, when Siddhartha pushed his body to the edge of biological death, his return home after many years wandering the jungle, and his confrontation with his cousin and would-be assassin. Through an integrative lens, many of history’s most revered philosophers, poets, teachers and prophets emerge in ways consistent with evolution and neuroscience, as well with the bodhisattva heart. Such figures include Jesus, Socrates, Dogen, Rumi, Chögyam Trungpa and Reggie Ray. Toward the end of the book, these many scientific and spiritual tributaries merge with work on biotensegrity, polyvagal theory and somatic psychotherapies. These inform some emerging spiritually-pristine, scientifically-satisfying approaches to meditation, psychotherapy, healing and spiritual practice.