Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
New York Times Bestseller
From one of America's greatest minds, a journey through psychology, philosophy, and lots of meditation to show how Buddhism holds the key to moral clarity and enduring happiness.
Robert Wright famously explained in The Moral Animal how evolution shaped the human brain. The mind is designed to often delude us, he argued, about ourselves and about the world. And it is designed to make happiness hard to sustain.
But if we know our minds are rigged for anxiety, depression, anger, and greed, what do we do? Wright locates the answer in Buddhism, which figured out thousands of years ago what scientists are only discovering now. Buddhism holds that human suffering is a result of not seeing the world clearly--and proposes that seeing the world more clearly, through meditation, will make us better, happier people.
In Why Buddhism is True , Wright leads readers on a journey through psychology, philosophy, and a great many silent retreats to show how and why meditation can serve as the foundation for a spiritual life in a secular age. At once excitingly ambitious and wittily accessible, this is the first book to combine evolutionary psychology with cutting-edge neuroscience to defend the radical claims at the heart of Buddhist philosophy. With bracing honesty and fierce wisdom, it will persuade you not just that Buddhism is true--which is to say, a way out of our delusion--but that it can ultimately save us from ourselves, as individuals and as a species.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Taking the red pill -- Paradoxes of meditation -- When are feelings illusions? -- Bliss, ecstasy, and more important reasons to meditate -- The alleged nonexistence of your self -- Your CEO is MIA -- The mental modules that run your life -- How thoughts think themselves -- "Self" control -- Encounters with the formless -- The upside of emptiness -- A weedless world -- Like, wow, everything is one (at most) -- Nirvana in a nutshell -- Is enlightenment enlightening? -- Meditation and the unseen order -- Appendix: A list of Buddhist truths.
At the heart of Buddhism is a simple claim: The reason we suffer -- and the reason we make other people suffer -- is that we don't see the world clearly. At the heart of Buddhist meditative practice is a radical promise: we can learn to see the world, including ourselves, more clearly, and so gain a deep and morally valid happiness. Robert Wright not only shows how taking this promise seriously can change your life -- how it can loosen the grip of anxiety, regret, and hatred -- but also how it can deepen your appreciation of beauty and of other people. Drawing on the latest in neuroscience and psychology, Wright explains why the path toward truth and the path toward happiness are the same path. In the light of modern science, both the Buddhist diagnosis and the Buddhist prescription make a whole new kind of sense. This book is the culmination of a personal journey that began with Wright's book on evolutionary psychology, The Moral Animal, and deepened as he immersed himself in meditative practice and conversed with some of the world's most skilled mediators. It shows how, in a time of technological distraction and social division, we can save ourselves from ourselves, both as individuals and as a species.
Reviews provided by Syndetics
Library Journal Review
Given the book's title, you may be surprised to learn that Wright (The Evolution of God) is not a Buddhist. Rather, he is a journalist and author of several best-selling books about science and religion, as well as a practitioner of mindfulness meditation. Here, he shares his journey with mindfulness and links the outcomes of his practice with evolutionary psychology. Wright argues that natural selection conditions humans to experience suffering, one of the foundational tenets of Buddhism. Strong emotions, such as fear, anxiety, and anger, helped our ancestors to survive, and so these survival mechanisms are still genetically part of us and the way we are wired. Reactions based on these emotions cause us to suffer, but meditation can help to control these reactions as one begins to see that these emotions are devoid of any inherent essence. Wright's treatment of key Buddhist concepts, such as nonself or emptiness, may initially seem glib. However, as he develops his argument, it becomes clear that Wright is trying to help readers to deconstruct and then reconstruct these fundamental concepts. VERDICT An important read for anyone interested in practicing meditation but not necessarily interested in becoming an expert in Buddhist philosophy.-Amanda Folk, Ohio State Univ. Libs. © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publishers Weekly Review
Wright (The Moral Animal) fascinates readers with this journey through evolutionary psychology in search of answers to the question of whether Buddhism's diagnosis of the human condition is true. Rather than conceiving of the self-or the mind, for that matter-as an autocrat, Wright opts for the modular model of mind, in which behavior is shaped by the interplay of networks dedicated to different tasks and situations with conflicting goals. Because there are ultimately many versions of the self (or "no-self") in the modular model, Wright argues that emotions are far more integral than reason in constructing perceptions and interpretations of the world. He recommends meditation as a process of dispelling the illusions that natural selection has created (which have since gone haywire outside of natural pressures), suggesting that it can be used to interrogate, contemplate, and disengage from the foundation of feelings that color experience. Through mindfulness, Wright says, one can achieve clarity of vision, breaking out of tribalistic notions of thinking to begin helping others and the world. But this is not easy to accomplish, and Wright's stories about his meditation experiences include his failures, anxieties, and faults. Wright's joyful and insightful book is both entertaining and informative, equally accessible to general audiences and more experienced practitioners. (Aug.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Using a framework of evolutionary psychology and philosophy, Wright (The Evolution of God, 2009) leads his readers on a scientific search for the truth of Buddhism. In doing so, he proves to be an often witty, occasionally self-deprecating guide who eschews what he calls the supernatural or more exotically metaphysical parts of Buddhism and focuses instead on its naturalistic aspects. Some of those parts, it should be acknowledged, are dauntingly esoteric and abstruse, such as anatta or not-self, the idea that the self doesn't exist. Happily, Wright has a talent for bringing clarity to this and what could otherwise be his subject's murkier aspects. His examination includes familiar elements of Buddhism: Nirvana, Enlightenment (with both capital and lower-case E's), dharma, mindfulness, and, importantly, meditation, to which he devotes the final chapter. It should be acknowledged that this is not a book for the casual reader; it requires extremely close reading and intense concentration. But the patient reader will find much here that is worth contemplating and that is, well, enlightening.--Cart, Michael Copyright 2017 Booklist
Kirkus Book Review
A bestselling author sets out to improve the world by encouraging mindful meditation.By his bold title, Pulitzer finalist Wright (The Evolution of God, 2009, etc.) means to assert that "the core of Buddhism's assessment of the human conditionits conception of certain basic aspects of how the mind works and of how we can change how the mind works...warrants enough confidence to get the label that the title of this book gives it." The author finds this corroboration in recent developments in psychology and evolutionary biology, contending that current theories suggesting a modular structure for the mind in place of a single executive support the Buddhist doctrine of "not-self." Furthermore, demonstrable distortions of our perceptions of the world, also anticipated by ancient Buddhist thought, originally served valuable evolutionary purposes but are now obsolete and contribute to personal and social dysfunction. Wright puts forth the mindfulness meditation offered by many Buddhist traditions as a means of overcoming our evolutionary-determined and intuitive habits of thinking and of perceiving the physical world and the human condition with greater clarity and compassion. The author aims to make some fundamentally bizarre-sounding doctrines of Buddhism accessible to skeptical and secular readers by offering scientific support for its assertions in simple language and an engaging style. He keeps explicitly religious references and exotic Asian-language terminology to a minimum; no prior familiarity with Buddhist teachings is required. Wright lightens the trek through some challenging philosophical concepts with well-chosen anecdotes and a self-deprecating humor as he discusses the pinnacles and setbacks of his own meditative experiences. While critical readers may take issue with the logic underlying some of his contentions, the author presents a well-organized, freshly conceived introduction to core concepts of Buddhist thought. A cogent and approachable argument for a personal meditation practice based on secular Buddhist principles. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Author notes provided by Syndetics
Robert Wright is the New York Times bestselling author of The Evolution of God (a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize), Nonzero , The Moral Animal , Three Scientists and their Gods (a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award), and Why Buddhism Is True . He is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the widely respected Bloggingheads.tv and MeaningofLife.tv. He has written for The New Yorker , The Atlantic , The New York Times , Time , Slate , and The New Republic . He has taught at the University of Pennsylvania and at Princeton University, where he also created the popular online course "Buddhism and Modern Psychology." He is currently Visiting Professor of Science and Religion at Union Theological Seminary in New York.