The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment

For those skeptical of supernatural claims and theistic versions of Buddhism, Robert Wright continues the quest that his earlier books such as The Moral Animal and The Evolution of God began. These titles hint at Wright's terrain, where fact and speculation, the tangible and the experiential, blur. He explores in Why Buddhism Is True the worldview that in the time of the historical Buddha, could not have been clearly expressed in pre-scientific, and very pre-Darwinian terms to human mindsets.

Fresh from teaching courses on Buddhism and science at Princeton and similar courses at the Union Theological Seminary, Wright blends a wide-ranging series of investigations summed up from neural and biological research. His thesis proposes that the truth-claims of the dharma were a first, and correctly directed, step towards our own understanding of natural selection and the drives it creates. Born with them, we can free ourselves from them. Buddhism predicted the remedy for our human condition.

For instance, what on the savannah might have kept us reproducing, in thrall to our communal band, and with sufficient resources to guard against hunger or competition now linger in us. They may be go under the names of lust, social fear of being shamed, avarice, gluttony and greed, but they convey the same "fetters" which Buddhist teaching encourages, and demands, we must overcome if we want to reach a more balanced and controlled mental and physical state, freed of the illusions of the senses.

Around this central argument, Wright spins a lot of tales. A Foreigner song stuck in his mind, an annoying sitter near him on a meditation retreat, an urge to become easily irritated. He's been on the Buddhist path a while, but he rejects the trappings which have grown up around the teaching. He opts for a secular version, acknowledging that it may well be diluted (as is mindfulness or yoga) as it turns to the West, but he analyzes, in a final addendum. the core concepts that his book's laid out about establishing the veracity of what the Buddha and adepts since have incorporated into the dharma.

The tone is casual despite the heaps of learning stirred in. Wright writes again for a popular audience. Such interpretations possess value, for those of us less able or less leisured to delve into what the labs or monasteries for that matter might be generating as scholarship. However, the weight of so much data, dispersed over many chapters, sometimes slows the pace. Despite his genial tone, parts of this felt repetitious, belaboring the obvious once stated. Yet I find this same reaction to some treatments of Buddhism. A core teaching, a set of instructions can be summed up pithily, but like chess, for each pursuit the application approaches the infinite. This might convince, therefore, those already initiating some dharma practice for a while, While Wright introduces teaching, it's more its implementation.

That leads him near the conclusion to some elevated claims. He endorses Daniel Ingram's promise that meditation results can be attained with diligence rapidly, and not just by those with decades of training. Wright like many admits that his transports have not occurred often, and when one did, he shows how ephemeral it was. He counsels daily discipline, more to calm and to establish more within one's reactive mechanism (not a term he uses) a longer-range, considered, and composed response to the triggers which, as with road rage, we inherit from billions of years of evolution, becoming an organism determined to gain ground, acquire loot, store up calories, and dominate by trophy wives.

I expected the author to turn to a philosopher who also predicted ways in which we can comprehend our predicament, and who is seen in retrospect as sympathetic to Buddhism, Schopenhauer. In my e-galley, I did not find any mention of the World as Will and Representation that he conceived. It seems prescient here. There's discussion of contemporary thinkers, more from psychology than philosophy..

This book will create some debate, I predict, among the more traditional Buddhist practitioner; those open to his analytical, even detached attitude at times, and his production of a practical set of guidelines, may benefit from a presentation of the dharma seeking liberation not into a higher realm, but from the natural selection which tethers us to demands which prevent us from fully entering the state the Buddha modeled. Sure, as Wright concurs, sentience and cognition and evolution into our present status all have definite advantages. But as to drawbacks, he advises the dharma. Even if the science we now promote might in the future shift, the bedrock of the dharma, Wright avers, remains solid. Beholden as we'll be to our genetic inheritance, we can nurture by Buddhism our true nature. (P.S. I read this as an e-galley via Edelweiss)

I like this book, and would like to say why. However, the publisher chose not to enable Text To Speech, which would have allowed me to enjoy the book while on my current roadtrip. If this is due to something other than greed, perhaps someone will enlighten me and I will give the book the five stars it deserves.

Please don't buy this book -- it's a complete misrepresentation of Buddhism. The author misuses basic Buddhist terminology and meanders between psychology, Darwinism and Buddhist philosophy while completely missing the point of the fundamental teachings of the Buddha. If you're interested in the connections between Buddhism and modern neuroscience, a much better resource is Daniel Goleman's and the Dalai Lama's "Destructive Emotions." (I'm a Buddhist nun and teacher, and I lived in a Buddhist monastery for a dozen years.)

To his credit, Robert Wright says up front that when he refers to "Buddhism" he is talking about "Western Buddhism" which is not practiced in Asia. This "Western Buddhism" is a philosophy stripped of all religious references and extracting the Four Noble Truths and calling that "Buddhism". You could write a book called "Why Christianity is True" and extract only the Golden Rule and accomplish the same thing, but to much less applause and perhaps howls of protest I suspect.

Setting aside the mythical aspects of Buddhism, Wright extracts what is useful from this ancient teaching to improve our lives. Our hominin forebears surely would not have survived using the counsel and techniques described here. But that's the whole point: Modernity necessitates that we chuck old habits instilled from evolution that are no longer advantageous and adopt a better approach to modern living.

We have feelings programmed into us to generate behaviors conducive to forwarding our genes into the next generation. Meditation allows us to pause, recognize such feelings from a more detached perspective, and control our response; either giving in to such feelings when appropriate or extinguishing them if their expression would no longer benefit us in our modern world. Road-rage is one example, driven by evolutionary impulses, that we should avoid for obvious reasons.

Wright's take on dharma and suffering (unsatisfactoriness), coupled with a better understanding of "emptiness", sheds enormous light on what causes our most egregious bouts of melancholy.

I especially appreciated Wright's assessment in light of his own shortcomings, as he describes them, and his somewhat stalwart but continuingly fruitful progress toward "enlightenment". This is an excellent read for anyone who wishes to understand Buddhism from a more secular viewpoint.

I participated in Robert Wright’s “Buddhism & Modern Psychology” online course. I found the course to be extraordinarily rewarding. I learned so much about the tenets of Buddhism and about evolutionary biology and psychology. The idea that natural selection hasn’t given our minds a clear view of reality is so compelling, and idea that mediation can be a tool to rebel against limitations and biases of our own nature is brilliant, if not life changing. So, I was eager to return to the same concepts in the book based off the course material.

I was disappointed. The author’s familiar tone and repeated usage of his handful of anecdotes from his personal meditation experiences are quickly tiring. The interviews with scholars and practitioners that Wright had for his online course don’t translate well into written back-and-forth narratives. The second half of the book seems even more muddled than the first half. There are so many asides and nonlinear narratives, it was felt a stream of consciousness. Or it was more like a lecture where the professor has a broad idea of what is to be covered but adds personal color and thoughts throughout. Maybe that’s good for the classroom but not on the page.

I've read part of this book and think highly of it. I had a chance to hear part of the Audible edition today and was stunned by the inappropriate style. The book itself is thoughtful, contemplative in parts, with a lot of detail about psychology and neurology. The reader spoke urgently, in a pressured way, as if he was reading the latest Jack Reacher novel. Unbearable to listen to. Why don't the publishers of audible books match the voices to the content? Robert Wright, the author of the book, is a professor and lecturer--why didn't he read it himself?

Wright chose a good title for this book. If he'd followed through on the promise of his title, what an interesting book that would have been! Here's what I expect of a book claiming to tell me why Buddhism is true:
1. Establish what Buddhism claims, and the claim(s) must be clear, testable and falsifiable.
2. Identify what evidence would prove the claim(s) false.
3. Identify what we would accept as validation of the truth of Buddhism's claim(s)
4. Pursue that evidence, especially the evidence in opposition to Buddhist claims. Take measurements that can be replicated.
5. Present results, conclusion, invite further investigation and experimentation from others.

Unfortunately, Wright does none of this. He never even starts one of these steps. Instead, I waded through a murky swamp, consisting of personal observations, unsupported assertions and a ragged, fly-by-night flirtation with evolutionary psychology. I'll explain these in order.

Wright's account of his personal experiences with meditation could have been interesting, if he'd given us enough detail to follow him and care about the outcome. He did not do this. If a meditator's memoir appeals to you, I recommend Dan Harris's "10% Happier" and Janwillem van de Wetering's "The Empty Mirror: Experiences in a Zen Monastery."

Wright's unsupported assertions come by the agency of terms he never defines clearly enough to make them useful: "mind," "emptiness," "reality" (he says feelings are separate from reality, but how is "reality" measured and tested?) and especially "enlightenment." Wright loads an assertion with these terms, gives zero evidence for it, then references his statement, as though he'd proven it. This is a familiar tactic of religious apologists, and it's funny to watch Wright perform this dance, while rejecting Buddhist miracle stories, reincarnation and other inconvenient anachronisms. Hey, as long as you're building castles in the air, why not make them colorful?

Wright brings this same blunted arrow to his engagement with evolution. After a breathtakingly superficial description of natural selection, he warns us that the system has no desires. Immediately after, he throws himself into personifying the phenomenon, as though to create maximum confusion. An example: "Natural selection doesn’t “want” us to be happy, after all, it just “wants” us to be productive. And the way to make us productive is to make the anticipation of pleasure very strong but the pleasure itself not very long-lasting."

Many people think there's no problem here, they "get it," they know this is just a teaching device. They are mistaken. Wright's treatment of the subject is wrong. Talking about evolution in this way is useless; you'll never obtain useful understanding with this upside-down language. Real instruction on this subject can be found in Allen MacNeill's excellent course "The Modern Scholar: Evolutionary Psychology: The Science of Human Nature," available on the store / Audible.

Finally, Wright and other Buddhists relentlessly lay claim to ordinary experiences most people have, by describing them in vague, quasi-religious terms and leaping to quasi-religious conclusions about them. They also imply that deep insight is only available if you follow their program, follow their rules, pay your tithe. "If you want to get in touch with your Buddha Nature," they say, "got to sign up for our retreat." This is false, and a dangerous attempt to gain power over you.

Meditation can be nothing other than observing your own mental activity; nothing else is present in the meditative situation. If you're interested in that, just do it. Don't hand over any control or direction to someone else. Sigmund Freud observed similar patterns in himself, his patients and his acquaintances, without ever meditating or submitting to a guru, so far as I know.

"There are cases in which parts of a person’s own body, even portions of his own mental life — his perceptions, thoughts and feelings — appear alien to him and as not belonging to his ego; there are other cases in which he ascribes to the external world things that clearly originate in his own ego and that ought to be acknowledged by it. Thus even the feeling of our own ego is subject to disturbances and the boundaries of the ego are not constant." —Sigmund Freud, "Civilization and its Discontents"

I don't know if this book needs another one star review for the point to get across because there are some very good one star reviews already, but, if so, then here goes. I've been to a silent Buddhist meditation retreat run by a real 80+ y/o monk/practitioner from Sri Lanka. I learned how to meditate from his book. I guess the title of this book and my ongoing interest caused me to buy it. Bad decision. Waste of money! Buddhism, if undertaken by a Westerner, is, at least for me, an intellectual exercise inspired by curiosity as much as anything else. This book trivializes Buddhism with repetitive, adolescent-level analogies of powdered sugar donuts and notions of passing on genes. NYT best seller - well, I guess that says a lot about both the book and the NYT best seller list. Complete babbling nonsense unworthy of the title. A commercial enterprise, I suspect, rather than a serious discussion of the title subject, which it certainly is not. If there is such a thing as karma, the author will not fare well in his next iteration, I suspect.

A Vajrayana buddhist tribal, religious view of truth wrapped in an incomplete or inaccurate scientific wrapper. I have been a meditator, the concentration kind apparently, for 47 years although I do not claim any kind of expertise. I have also learned and practiced to a lesser extent mindful and metta meditation. I see benefits especially in clearing the mind of bothersome and distorting feelings and thoughts. As a scientist, however, I find the authors representation of evolutionary science, theory of relativity and neuroscience to be exceptionally faulty and cherry picked to support his religious, tribal viewpoint. He argues from Hume that feelings are all we really have to make judgments on but then forgets that Hume denies that morality can be derived from any observable fact, "you can't make an ought from an is". In fact the author makes all kinds of claims about clarifying morality through Vajrayana practice without any philosophical defense whatsoever. He admits that experiences during meditation are all subjective but does not avoid making all kinds of "objective" conclusions from these experiences. His neuroscience is sadly incomplete and out of date. The gene centric view of evolution is an old out dated Dawkins view that has no moral relevance. Einstein does not argue that there are no perspectives with which to perceive the universe correctly but instead argues that all frames of reference produce their own particular perspective that can still be utilized to make incredibly precise predictions of the effects of mass, acceleration and velocity, e.g., the essence is complicated but clearly evident everywhere.

I remain a believer that meditation can assist in eliminating delusions that are unhelpful and allow for interesting experiences and I continue to practice those I mentioned along with biofeedback and Tai Chi. I believe the self exists but is every changing and fluid, influenced by all kinds of positive and negative environmental influences. However, passion is an important element in finding truth in my view and a definite component of Einstein's and Darwin's life pursuit. It is hard to believe that I may be one with an asteroid plummeting toward Earth unintentionally determining its destruction. There is commonality especially in the generation of species but we are not all one. Morality requires understanding and analysis of what has been, is now and could be considered ethical not emptiness. Buddhism has been an important religion and the practice of meditation that arises from that and Hinduism is important. Buddhist cultures have also been and are now responsible for horrible atrocities and immorality. It has its place but the texts which contain many supposed statements of Buddha are dated and not any more a gospel truth than any other religion.

I don't think the writer understands evolution. Evolution intends nothing. It occurs randomly. Chains of DNA fail to replicate exactly and a mutation occurs. If a mutation is significantly harmful, the organism dies sooner. If the mutation is helpful, maybe the organism does better. But far from always. Most of our DNA does, well, nothing that we can figure out. There is no mind behind it. Stephen Jay Gould writes that intention is the most common mistake of people discussing evolution. Evolution does not have consciousness. It intends nothing. It simply occurs.

In terms of numbers, bacteria are the most successful species. In terms of intelligence - well, we are managing to kill the planet with global warming, chemicals and perhaps with nuclear weapons. The jury is still out. Too soon to tell.

Organisms engage in eating, defecating and reproducing. They may or may not have or intention. Now that we are in the game with gene editing, we've gone beyond life stock breeding. But that is us. And we really don't know whether those changes will be harmless or eliminate something that seems bad that is actually useful. Too soon to tell.

Wright constantly projects intention on creation which according to evolution and physics is pretty much random. Lots of patterns exist in randomness. But it is still random. And if something doesn't work out - well it stops existing or never comes into existence.

Buddhism says individuals have consciousness. It rejects a greater consciousness, soul or God. It champions no soul or nothingness.

There are a lot of popular books around about Buddhism for westerners. What makes this different is that Robert Wright’s goal is to show that some core tenets of Buddhism are borne out by modern, evolutionary psychology — hence the claim that Buddhism is “true.”

Maybe the core insight that Wright draws from evolutionary psychology is that human beings did not evolve to become truth-detectors. They evolved to reproduce successfully. You might think that the one would serve the other — that survival to reproductive age and caring for our young depended on our perceiving the world truthfully. But Wright gives persuasive examples where the two, truth and survival of the species, may diverge. Our senses, for example, may over-protect us, sensitizing us to dangers in our environment so much so that we react to a stirring in the grass that is actually just a lizard or the wind, to ensure that when there really is a poisonous snake, we will react. We may over-react 10 times for every one time that there really is a snake in the grass, but being wrong most of the time is worth it when the stakes are sufficiently high.

The link from there to Buddhism is the first Buddhist “truth” that Wright lists in an appendix — “Human beings often fail to see the world clearly, and this can lead them to suffer and to make others suffer.” The example of the snake in the grass may seem not to pose a real problem, but Wright points to many things that evolution has prepared us for but that no longer serve us well — our attraction to sweet foods for example. When sweet foods were rare, their calorie density justified, in evolutionary terms, our attraction to them. Now that they are plentiful, that instinctive attraction works to our detriment.

More to Wright’s ultimate point, evolution has given us tribalistic outlooks. We display a bias towards our friends and community — people like us — and against those who are unlike us — people from other “tribes”, e.g., of different ethnicities, beliefs, or appearance. As the technologies of conflict advance, the costs of that bias increase to potential catastrophic scales.

Wright does have a big practical, ambitious goal in writing the book — nothing less than promoting world peace. He believes we are at a “moment of truth” in which we need to solve “the problem of ethnic, religious, national, and ideological conflict that can feed on itself, creating a spiral of growing hatred that leads to true catastrophe.” He does want to “help save the world”.

Buddhist insight and practices could help us, he is claiming, toward that goal. It’s not that everyone is going to become a Buddhist (he doesn’t even claim that he is a Buddhist himself), but that the influence of Buddhism’s “truth” on our culture could have a crucial beneficial effect.

He also means to address the theoretical side of Buddhism. Wright wants to “explore the scientific foundations of a Buddhist worldview.” He warns that he doesn’t mean by that, validating, for example, that the practice of meditation can reduce stress (not that it doesn’t). He wants to go deeper, into a Buddhist view of the world as illusion, partly for practical purposes, but also, more generally, to help us get ourselves right with the world.

There are numerous aspects to what he calls “scientific foundations”. And he develops, or refers to, numerous theoretical claims.

One is a “modular” theory of mind — Wright expands a Buddhism-inspired discussion of the non-existence of the self, or of “not-self”, into a theory of mind as a playing field of competing “modules”, with no overlying “CEO-Self” in charge and making final decisions. Decisions are made by the competition among the modules, such as a “mate-acquisition module” which may compete with a module that serves to warn us away from potential mates already in relationships.

While Wright is capturing something valid in introspection, that we do seem to entertain contests between competing potentials rather than engaging in cool deliberation over all our interests, the status of these “modules” is unclear. Dividing up our thoughts into modules seems imprecise — what modules we think there might be, what their boundaries would be, etc., seems more a matter of our power to imagine them than our ability to discern “real” modules.

Wright depends centrally, though, upon the core claim mentioned above, that evolution has prepared us for spreading our genes — reproducing and rearing offspring. Our perceptions and feelings are tuned to that goal, rather than to perceiving the world “clearly”, as it actually is. What Buddhism will contribute is the ability to begin to clear away some of those illusions that natural selection has equipped us with, notably our feelings — our positive and negative sensitivities and biases — that distort our perceptions of reality.

What is called for is the ability to transcend our nature — to get beyond those biased sensitivities that may have once served us well in our history as a species, but that now threaten our ability to live in peace, both in our everyday lives and as a world community.

Wright is aware of the difficulty of this notion of a clear, unbiased experience of reality. He, like others in discussing related Buddhist concepts, tends to define what he means negatively — the “unconditoned”, “emptiness”, “formlessness”, “not-self”. It is hard to speak in positive terms, when all of experienced reality, all perception, is delusion. What is there when the delusion is wiped away is the absence of familiar reality. And we don’t have a way to perceive it or to describe it in positive terms, since perception itself is delusion.

Wright shies away from the idea of a mystical experience of reality — such a thing would not fit his goal of squaring Buddhist insight with scientific psychology. Rather he tries to describe a clear experience of reality as acquiring a kind of distance from our feelings, a more deliberate way of engaging or not engaging with our sensitivities and biases. Where they serve us, we engage, and where they do not serve us, we withdraw from them.

I think that where I’m left after having read the book is that I know more than I knew about the potential compatibility between evolutionary psychology and Buddhist insights. I’m not convinced — the arguments have a loose quality about them.

All arguments to the effect that something (e.g., perceptual biases and sensitivities) is the result of natural selection seem to me to carry a kind of post hoc character. Yes, it makes sense, that evolution would have provided us an oversensitivity to the possible presence of poisonous snakes, and that that could explain whey we are gripped with fear when the rustling in the grass is actually just the wind or a lizard. But its making sense isn’t evidence of its actually having happened that way. The post hoc reasoning for evolutionary processes seems very loose — given result x, it just seems a matter of exercising our storytelling ingenuity to come up with an evolutionary explanation of how x came to be, how it provided some survival and/or reproductive advantage. Whether the story is true or not is another matter. And when we actually examine the evolution of human behaviors and characteristics, e.g., tool-use, language, etc., they actually turn out to be very messy stories, with lots of twists and turns rather than a simple compelling rationale.

I use the word “compatibility” to describe the relation Wright draws between evolutionary psychology and Buddhist tenets rather than his own word, “corroboration”. He would like to say that evolutionary psychology “corroborates” core Buddhist tenets. I think that’s a stronger claim than his argument supports. Buddhists, of course, have not traditionally claimed that delusion is borne from natural selection, even though, according to Wright, they end up in similar positions with respect to our “not seeing the world clearly”. I’m not even sure what would constitute corroboration, given the very different contexts in which Buddhist tenets have been developed and in which evolutionary psychology has been developed.

What would it be like to have an unfiltered, unfettered experience of the world around us, where we are relaxed and calm and not distracted by our usual worries and concerns? Maybe some readers have experienced that – a sunrise or sunset, a full moon, a sky full of stars, a sky full of rain and lightning – or some other moment of encompassing peace. Could we somehow train ourselves to have that kind of experience more often?

There's more to it, of course, but that is a big part of what Robert Wright addresses in the surprise NYTimes bestseller, Why Buddhism is True. "{T}he way it seems to work is some feelings actually get accentuated - first and foremost the sensation of beauty."

He has taught this subject at Princeton, and admirably maintains his focus. There are many flavors of Buddhism, as with other religions, and many intriguing aspects worthy of discussion. But he's very Western and pragmatic, and that suited me well. "I don't believe in reincarnation or related notions of karma, and I don't bow to the statue of Buddha before entering the meditation hall."

He calls himself a "laboratory rat" with ADD, figuring that, "if I could get much in the way of benefits out of meditation, just about anyone could." He does.

I loved his application of Darwinian theory: "Buddhism had been studying how the human mind is programmed to react to its environment, how exactly the 'conditioning' works. Now, with Darwin's theory, we understood what had done the programming." Many of our impulses, designed to help us pass on our genes, don't serve us well today. Our feelings and perceptions often end up leaving us misguided, unhappy and dissatisfied.

"Both our natural view of the world 'out there' and our natural view of the world 'in here' - the world inside our heads - are deeply misleading." He's convincing in explaining why. Through common sense examples, scientific studies, and his own experience, he explains how Buddhist practices successfully address our delusive way of living. He's not shy about bigger issues - e.g. how continuing tribalism is harming us. "I think the salvation of the world can be secured via the cultivation of calm, clear minds and the wisdom they allow." A big claim, but he's not alone in making it. Although he believes modest improvements via Buddhist practice are the practical goal, he also takes on explaining "nirvana", and does a good job of it.

I used to recommend more advanced books like Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind to people wanting a place to start on Buddhist principles - and that didn't work very well. From now on, I'm recommending this one. He has done his homework, but made the concepts accessible for those new to all this.

I can't write enough to cover how strongly I agree with this book. Robert Wright has managed to summarize everything I've grown to understand about the world and about Buddhism as well as fill in a lot of the blanks. This book is an absolute must-read. The basis of this book is scientific, and uses evolution – natural selection and its resulting psychology – as the starting point for everything he discusses. He then augments that science with Buddhist psychology. Essentially, he paints a complete picture of the human species by describing how natural selection works and, where that ends, shows how Buddist psychology provides a path to adjusting some of the less necessary traits we are now left with because of what it took for the species to survive to this point.

In this book there is no attempt to sway you to Buddhism and there is no attempt to tell you that your religion is wrong and that Buddhism is right (that's the nice thing about Buddhism, at least in its secular form – it doesn't offend the core tenets of any religion I'm familiar with). He explains that the Buddha (and those that followed) were on to something, that they understood the resulting human psychology brought about by natural selection though they didn't necessarily understand how we came to be this way, just like Darwinian Evolution explains how we came to be this way but doesn’t describe how some of that isn’t as necessary as it once was and needs to be kept in check.

I will admit – I was skeptical to read a book (technically I listened to it as an audiobook) with a name like “Why Buddhism is True”. Anything with such a name will typically turn me off. But I unknowingly read an article by Robert Wright online, and upon looking into the author found that he was quoting some portions of his book, so I grabbed the free first chapter or so on my Kindle. I think it took me five minutes of reading to decide to buy the audiobook. I daresay that this is the single best book I’ve ever read. It is scientific and it is objective even though he draws upon a lot of his own subjective experiences. I can’t stress enough that you should try this book. If you like science, if you like psychology, if you like philosophy, if you’re concerned about the state of yourself or the world in general, you will likely find this book not only exciting and engaging, you may find it life-changing.

I've had some prior exposure to Buddhism through a friend. I sat in meditation with him, and attended some Dharma talks. While my exposure was brief, I nonetheless felt that I'd gained some benefit from the meditation, and have remained interested in Buddhism. But that was several years ago.

By some chance, I happened on this book - Why Buddhism is True - and it rekindled my interested as well as greatly expanded my understanding. For someone interested in learning about Buddhism, I feel this is a good primer. His writing style is casual, and he grounds some very heady abstract concepts to his own life and experiences. It's a history lesson, overview, practical guide, and more, from the perspective of a "layperson." He also taps into other areas of personal interest: why we behave the way we behave, natural selection, and similar topics and themes.

In the end I pretty much bought into most of his arguments, and broadly enjoyed his take on it.

While I did enjoy it, I do have a couple quibbles for which I'm knocking off a star.

First, while he clearly knows way more about the topic than many people (like me), his admitted limited experience and "success" undermines his credibility somewhat. Time and again he returns to a few specific experiences he had while meditating during retreats, and while they are good references, over time I just felt a growing lack of authority and command of the topics. As an analogy, if you wanted to gain wisdom about, for example, acting, you'd prefer to hear from a celebrated actor at the top of their craft, or better yet, multiple accomplished actors, rather than someone who'd done a few workshops. To be fair, he does bring in perspectives and anecdotes from a variety of highly experienced practitioners and others, which tempers this point a bit, but it's still through his less-experienced lens.

Second, there was quite a bit of repetition for my taste, although some may argue this is a strength. He does a good job of building up a framework to provide context for increasingly complex or abstract concepts. But within a given section, I felt he spent too long over-explaining and rephrasing topics, which only served to muddy concepts that could have been more clear. Simply put, some judicious editing would make an already strong book even stronger. (as others have said)

I was as usual impressed by my local library where I borrowed this book and their generosity in allowing me to renew it a few times; I have not much time to read and it takes me time to pour over philosophical content. For starters this book was well set up for this snippet reader. Each chapter has multiple section headings with no section greater that a few pages and each section segued nicely into the next but you can also stop and contemplate or write a haiku as I did because I did find the content inspirational and thought provoking.

I've read a lot of Buddhist books and still came away from this with new understanding. For example I really appreciated the author's emphasis on our innate habits toward our inability to perceive reality or as he also thoroughly describes how our emotions/feelings contribute to our perceptions. He further clarifies the concept of emptiness and enlightenment reminding us how we work against our self and shared interests. He affirms the need to be aware of our primitive nature that works against us (because all it wants to do is keep our genes going at all costs) and meditation as necessary but perhaps meditation as necessary should be his next book/ or is another of his books as this book is not about that solution per se but he does affirm it through his own experience as a process toward enlightenment and liberation. Regardless we must recognize the problem we have with realizing truth or we can never reach a solution; the problem he refers to as tribalism, many our of control states of mind, which we are seeing has the power to destroy our society! If not this book, check out others I reviewed over the years (albeit not in awhile) but please find a way to become part of the solution; we need you! Meanwhile here are a couple of haiku inspired by this read:

Maybe the label
is fake-taste unencumbered
by feelings of wine.

In here and out there
These twin illusions unveil
Through observation.

If the old adage that you can't judge a book by its cover is true, is it also true that you can't judge a book by its title? Ordinarily, I would answer "yes" to both assertions. In my experience, neither an appealing cover nor a clever (or, for that matter, a dull) title can accurately predict what awaits the reader inside the cover and below the title.

But in the case of Robert Wright's latest book, the title phrase "why Buddhism is true" is insistent enough to command our attention, and controversial enough to invite our judgment, before we so much as open the book's cover. Wright surmised as much himself, and so he opens with "a note to readers" in which he offers an explanation of his title.

One is immediately charmed by the unpretentious candor of the note's opening paragraph: "Any book with a title like Why Buddhism Is True should have some careful qualification along the way. We might as well get that over with [right now]." There follow five paragraphs, only the fourth of which seriously grapples with the problematic word "true". After first admitting that Buddhism teaches us to be skeptical that our imperfect ways of apprehending the world are capable of showing us the truth of anything, he then argues that since the Buddha's most famous discourse is called "The Four Noble Truths" it might indeed be permissible to use the word "true" in discussing Buddhism.

Hmmm. Not too convincing an argument to this reader - nor, I would venture to guess, to the growing number of practitioners who count themselves as secular Buddhists, and for whom assertions of "truth" creep uncomfortably close to declarations of religious faith. We secular practitioners take seriously the Buddha's reported admonition to the monks who followed him that they were not to believe that something was true just because he said so, but rather that they should believe only what their own experience showed them was true. And we secular practitioners also take seriously Stephen Batchelor's argument in his recent book After Buddhism (interestingly enough, a book Wright includes in his impressive bibliography, but seems not to be in full agreement with) that there is a strong case to be made that the expression "Four Noble Truths" was never uttered by the Buddha, and that a far more appropriate translation for the expression he did use would be "The Four Tasks".

But enough quibbling over this introductory note. For now, let's give Wright partial credit for at least addressing the issue up front, and let's also stand by our opening promise not to judge a book's merit by either its cover or its title. And so, let's move on to a consideration of this book's content, and of its author's intent.

When we do move into the body of the book, we discover that Wright has brought his considerable mastery of multiple but related fields of knowledge - including evolutionary psychology, natural selection, philosophy (particularly, and very rewardingly, the writings of David Hume), and the current state of experimental research in neuroscience - all to bear upon his growing understanding of the classic teachings of Buddhism and the value of mindfulness meditation, of which he has been an enthusiastic practitioner for the past fifteen years.

Surprisingly, Wright's enthusiasm for his meditation practice can sometimes cross over from charming to cloying, as in the early chapters he shares far too many trivial anecdotes from his early retreat experiences. But tiresome as they inevitably become, these candid observations allow us to feel both the earnestness and the humility that he brings to his practice. And this in turn prepares us to more readily receive the crucial message that he intends to deliver with this book.

His thesis, boiled down to the shortest sentence I can devise for it, is as follows: that the process of natural selection, obeying the genetic imperative of assuring the survival of the gene from each generation to the next, has resulted in human behaviors bound to cause suffering; that centuries ago, the Buddha had a brilliant insight into the nature of this innate human suffering and how it might be alleviated; and that both contemporary neuroscience and current world conditions point unmistakably to the validity of the Buddha's insight and to the urgent necessity for humanity to begin following his teachings.

This thesis is convincingly developed through each of the book's sixteen chapters, and is brought to a powerful apex in its penultimate chapter, in a four-page passage to which Wright assigns the poignant heading "A Brief History of Life". In it, he discusses the alarming rise of tribalism across the globe, and the extreme forms of hatred this phenomenon is spawning. Here's an excerpt:

"What causes all the hatred? It's always the same thing: human beings operating under the influence of human brains whose design presupposed their specialness … convincing us that we and ours are in the right, that we are by nature good … whereas they and theirs aren't in the right and aren't by nature good.

"We need to reject the core evolutionary value of the specialness of self. There's probably never been a time in human history when this rejection was more vital. … Buddhism deserves credit for so early, so acutely, and so systematically diagnosing the problem and for offering such a comprehensive prescription."

Nothing in the above two paragraphs asserts that Buddhism is true. But every word in them attests to why it's of such import. The same goes for the book in its entirety.

And that's why "Why Buddhism Is True" is deserving of a wide readership, and why Wright's intention for this book is of far greater significance than the title he has chosen for it.

Even if you already have a religion or worldview, this book helps you see why Buddhism can enhance what you already believe. The author Robert Wright states from the beginning that he’s not writing about the “supernatural” parts of Buddhism (like reincarnation), but is rather addressing the “naturalistic” parts (like psychology and philosophy). He even says he’s not a Buddhist, but he finds value in many of their principles.

Wright’s writing style is authentic. For instance, he says the following about meditation, a practice often associated with Buddhism (but which, he points out, isn’t practiced by most Asian Buddhists):

“As any good meditation teacher will tell you, if you talk about meditation in terms of success or failure, you’re misunderstanding what meditation is. Here I must depart from orthodoxy. I wouldn’t advocate meditation if I didn’t think there was something people could achieve by it.”

Wright provides encouragement for those among us struggling with our own practices of meditation. In answer to the oft-repeated question, “Will meditation make me happier?” he gives this honest answer:

“Well in my case—and, as you will recall, I’m a particularly hard case—the answer is yes, it’s made me a little happier.” He further elaborates that his quality of happiness is now improved because of finding a truer view of the world.

The book also gives real-life applications about mindfulness meditation, not just for cushion time, but when you’re struggling to stay in the moment, or when you want to be more attuned to beauty, or when you want to control your anger at the rude driver in front of you.

Good metaphors abound in the book, such as:

“You think you’re directing the movie, but you’re actually just watching it. Or, at the risk of turning this into a metaphor that’s impossible to wrap your mind around, the movie is directing you—unless you manage to liberate yourself from it.”

Granted, the concepts are not always easy to grasp. Sections on emptiness and enlightenment can get deep. But for the most part, the basic Buddhist ideas are fairly easy to grasp.

Overall, while the book is about why Buddhism is true, it’s also about spiritual life in general:

“Anyway, my basic view of religious beliefs is that the ultimate question isn’t their specific content, but rather: What kind of person do the beliefs make you us. How do they lead you to behave?”

This book provides moments of moral truth and wisdom of clarity. But it also provides freedom.

“But I don’t think it happens very often that the truth sets you free, period. Sometimes it’s the other way around: freedom lets you see the truth.”

I definitely find truth in that.

I love the fact that Buddhism is a philosophy that leads itself to being a religion, as well as a practice people can approach from a secular or atheistic perspective. Personally the religious mythos within Buddhism fascinates me but mythos is way outside the scope of this book.

Here we have a purely psychological dissection of Buddhism and how it rings true to the very nature of the human condition. We all - no matter our faith perspective - are served well to practice the precepts put forth in Buddhism. If you are looking for a read that strips away all the enculturation, religiosity, and mythos of the philosophy - this is the book for you to read. Highly recommend.

This book is what you get when you mix knowledge of natural selection, psychology, elements of the Buddhist tradition, and a masterful communicator of ideas in Robert Wright. It is in some ways a personal account, and in some ways a self-help book, but it is fundamentally an explanation of ideas.

To try to distill those ideas in a sentence: natural selection creates a "hedonic treadmill" of dissatisfaction, and mindfulness meditation - as described by parts of Buddhism - can help us better appreciate the true nature of reality and self.

In bullet points:

1. Human beings often fail to see the world clearly, and this can cause them and others to suffer.
2. Humans anticipate more enduring satisfaction from the attainment of goals than they actually get. The resultant mindset of perpetual aspiration makes sense as a product of natural selection, but it doesn't lead to lifelong happiness.
3. Dukha (suffering or dissatisfaction) is a relentlessly recurring part of life as it is normally lived. Tanha (thirst or craving) is how natural selection ensures that organisms are constantly scanning the horizon for things to be unhappy about, and in the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism it leads to dukha.
4. The two sides of tanha are clinging attraction to pleasant things and aversion to unpleasant things. Mindfulness meditation and weaken their grip and transform lives, whether "nirvana" is attainable or not.
5. Our intuitive conception of self is misleading at best. Both modern neuroscience and Buddhism agree that the conscious self is not really in charge. Evolution developed a "modular" mind, whereby thoughts think themselves based on more primitive feelings and reactions. Consciousness is the Head of PR & Rationalization, not the CEO.
6. The boundaries of self are arbitrary and do not exist. Buddhism says all is nothing; Hinduism says all is one; science doesn't disagree with - or even necessarily distinguish between - either.
7. Essence is a perceptual construct, not a reality. Meditation can help dampen essence, or permit selective engagement with it. Meditators who do this seem happy and benevolent.
8. Not seeing the world clearly can lead to suffering for self and others.
9. Awareness of conditions - causes - and determinism is consistent with mindfulness meditation and seeing the world clearly.
10. Feelings are the primary drivers of thought and action that unenlightened people are blind to.
11. Important parts of Buddhism are consistent with modern understanding of natural selection, neuroscience, and psychology.

There's more, in particular more about how these ideas can tie into a moral framework, but the bullets above are what resonated with me. Wonderful, life-altering book.

I was incredibly frustrated by this book's description which included a quote claiming this to be the first book in which modern neuroscience was utilized, in addition to philosophy, to offer insight into Buddhist concepts and "why Buddhism works". In fact, the book "Buddha's Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love & Wisdom " - a title that requires no further explanation - by Rick Hansen preceded this one by, at the very least, 5 yrs. Claiming to have conceived this concept would not bother me in the least had Buddha's Brain not proven to be a life-changing book for me. But it did, so I am! :) I think it should be required reading for all of humanity!

Robert Wright’s book Why Buddhism is True originates in two distinct traditions. The first is evolutionary psychology, which holds that our brains evolved adaptively to maximize procreation and survival, producing everything from the consciousness of selfhood to the psychology of pleasure to competitive kinship structures. The second is Buddhism (at least Wright’s variant), which holds that most of these adaptive behaviors are not only illusory, but ultimately the source of all human suffering. For Wright, meditation (Vipassana) is a way to consciously examine and redirect our inherited neural response mechanisms (evolutionary psychology), thereby decreasing suffering (Buddhism). If Wright’s extended discussion of evolutionary psychology is true, then Buddhism‘s solution to suffering is true as well—even if the actual solution means simply not getting as angry as often or being able to get a good night’s sleep before a stressful public speaking engagement. So far so good.

But there’s more. Wright states at the outset–and all along the way–that meditation might be more than a methodology for addressing individual suffering. For Wright (and for many evolutionary psychologists), the global problems we face are by-products of the mismatch between our hunter-gatherer brains and contemporary realities. A brain that adaptively evolved small kinship networks may not be the best brain to deal with global ecological calamity; the brain that evolved rapid response mechanisms, especially to danger, might not be the best brain to control nuclear weapons. In this expanded scenario, meditation allows us to intervene in hunter-gatherer neural biology, see the world differently, make decisions based on the reality we inhabit rather than the archaic evolutionary tools that got us here. If enough people adopt meditative practices and change their relationship to the crippling effects of evolution, the human race might reach a tipping point, the “Metacognitive Revolution.” For Wright, this revolution is our last best hope: the way to stop war, end eco-catastrophe, and avert evolutionary suicide, one meditating brain at a time.

Whether Buddhist meditation can save the planet isn’t really the point (and certainly not the focus of the book). The point is Wright’s widely shared belief that our current unmediated cognitive abilities are not enough to avert catastrophe. Underlying this belief is a deep, unspoken anxiety surrounding biological evolution, a nagging suspicion that natural selection, left to its own devices, leaves no one standing. Buddhism and meditation are Wright’s antidotes to this anxiety, an embodiment of his desire to expand human agency beyond the biological determinism at the heart of evolutionary psychology’s description of natural selection. Wright doesn’t prove Buddhism is true; he hopes it is true. He also hopes human beings are capable of happiness and of shaping their own individual and collective futures. Breathing in, he knows he’s breathing in.

I listened to his book via Audible hard on the heels of doing the same with Sapolsky's 'Behave'. Wright performs an invaluable service for those of us who practiced for years but sometimes struggled to understand the central tenants of anatta and sunyata. He locates the understanding and criticality of these concepts so clearly and forcefully, drawing on and enhancing both the technical and experiential components of practice. I felt fortunate to have just finished 'Behave' before moving to this book since the science involved in evolutionary/neurobiological model of the brain is at the core of both and Sapolsky's work is a true tour de force on those matters.

Wright's work will enhance both your understanding and practice of meditation as well as, if you're open to it, establish it as a prime need for a world divided against itself by outmoded mental systems long in need of overhaul. One truly comes to appreciate the genius of the Buddha in seeing the mind not so differently than current neurobiologists some 2500 hundred years ago.

No other religion seems to be subjected to explorations by Westerners (self-professed secular Buddhists, included) than Buddhism. Perhaps, the simplicity of the core instructions (unlike the more complex Hinduism which has more than inspired Buddhism, though it is always positioned as a direct rebel for Hinduism) have made such explorations feasible (if one were to ask that question of Islam or Christianity, I wonder what can be subjected to scientific discovery). Wright asserts that science (particularly evolutionary biology) and Buddhism have different modes for exploration and different thresholds for evidence, but are ultimately trying to articulate similar concepts. It is a fascinating concept that oftentimes manifests as hunting for evidence/explanation to fit that assertion and leaving parts that doesnt fit (karma, reincarnations, for example). Despite these quirks, Wright manages to capture the essence of Western Buddhism (respectfully branding this separately from the traditional versions) and focusing mostly on the meditation instructions. In some ways, Wright attempts to be respectful to the religious/philosophical underpinnings of meditative techniques - which other authors, especially those focused on MBSR strip away to an almost reductionist view of meditation. Wright deserves credit for that approach. Nevertheless, the narrative style, first person accounts of meditation and its impact, lucid explanation of the core sutras and its import in meditative practices, their potential analogies in evolutionary biology makes this book an interesting, entertaining, and thought-provoking read.

Why Buddhism is True is a delightfully sly book of self-help for those who consider themselves too smart for self-help, which of course so many of us do. This is truly one of those books you'll find a reason to recommend to anyone and everyone - because we could all do with a little more happiness in our lives.

This book is many things, including being extremely well written, informative, accessible, and enlightening. I am someone who doesn't necessarily align with any particular spiritual or religious group, but, rather take snippets of different groups that resonate with me. To date, many of my sensibilities aligns with Buddhism, mainly because of it's belief in impermanence, compassion, and gratitude.

This book includes a discussion of meditation from many different perspectives. Since many of my students often ask me questions about meditation, I'd like to share this passage:

"Here's what I've noticed about thoughts that intrude when I'm trying to focus on my breath. They often seem to have feelings attached to them. What's more, their ability to hold my attention-in other words, to keep me enthralled, to keep me from noticing that they're holding my attention-seems to depend on the strength of those feelings." (p. 115).

This is one of the most provocative books on the subject.
Special thanks to my son, Josh, for the gift of this book. He just knew.

A good book with a terribly misleading title. It's ironic that while the author talks about the destruction of ego, he chooses to name his book in such a presumptuous way. One thing I always find annoying about religions of the world is how they claim to be THE one, THE answer, THE way, THE only truth and salvation of us sinful humans. My impression of Buddhism was the opposite; that it is all-accepting, all-welcoming, and so the title is off-putting, but the minute sample of the audio pulled me, and I hoped it would be a good introduction to Buddhism.

As I listened to the book over the course of the past two weeks, I couldn't decide if I absolutely hate it or love it, and then I would see the irony yet again: The very message of this book is about observing our thoughts from the seat of awareness, and creating a space that reminds us we are not our thoughts, we are not our version of reality. So I did that. I kept an open mind, and asked: "What can I learn from this book that can help me be a better person, a better wife, a better daughter, a better coach to my clients, a better yogi?" And I found some insightful answers. Here are some of those answers:

- If you can observe your negative thoughts or feelings in a mindful way, if you can "face" them and not act on them, their power decreases and they eventually go away. The author uses various examples of temptation and desire to make his point. I remember my mom was doing exactly what the author suggests and I took great joy in telling her that she was using Buddhism to achieve it. Storytime: Back when we lived in Iran, my dad traveled to the US for 6 months to plan our future, and during that time, my mom decided to get in perfect shape to surprise him. She went on a drastic diet! Her clever method to resist the many temptations at the countless family gatherings with tables filled to the brim with Persian sweets and delights was to imagine herself eating the dessert, tasting it, delighting in it, swallowing it and being done with it. As she did this, the desire to have the actual dessert went away; she was back in control. THAT is exactly what the author talks in his mindfulness meanderings.

-Meditation, even for 20 minutes a day, can benefit you over time. It can help you become a better person and my favorite, it amplifies the beauty of the world around you. It will help you be more attuned to sounds and touch and sight of what is now most ordinary, and that can help you slow down and satiate more in life.

What I wasn't crazy about is this notion that our feelings and thoughts are something to "get rid of". He dances circles around this idea but essentially, he is saying that our feelings

He uses The Matrix - clever analogy, using a popular movie to make his point - and this whole idea that the way we behave and operate is all decided upon by Natural Selection many eons ago. So it is natural selection that put us in this tribal community mode of operation, and how that idea of tribe is not good and does not work for how we need to live and be with other humans. I don't know. Maybe I'm not yet at a level to appreciate it. Maybe this didn't really interest me.

Oh and there is the whole "Self doesn't exist". Sorry but you don't really exist. And don't worry, neither does anything else. Hmmm. Definitely a bit too existential for yours truly, but maybe one day, I'll be glad to know that my 'self' doesn't really exist. ;)!

All in all, I'm not glad to have read this book. And that's okay because I don't read books for a singular reason. I read them to gain an unexpected insight, and even if I'm very familiar with the ideas of observing our thoughts and pausing before we act, the way this book went about it was yet another angle that I do appreciate.

This book grounds many Buddhist precepts in Evolutionary Psychology. I had lot of transformative changes in my thought processes after reading this book. Our minds have evolved thoughts and feelings which are due to natural selection. Such thoughts are grounded in feelings and may be regarding acquisition, mate selection or jealousy. These thoughts and feelings are harmful. They are explained nowadays by the modular theory of mind in which various modules get activated in the brain subconsciously due to external stimuli. These has been proven by many experiments in psychology. By not associating with these thoughts and feelings and letting them dissipate we refuse the concept of "self". This is also core to Buddhist precept called "non self" which ties to this finding. This is brought out very lucidly. The next chapter deals with the concept of "essence". Are things by nature good, bad or ugly? Is a buzz saw noise disturbing? The author illustrates through his own meditation experiences that you can argue that the nature of essence is not permanent or a property of the objective but a matter of psychological perception. He quotes numerous psychological theories including the fundamental attribution error. He then discusses the concept of "tanha" or "desire" and how it feeds on itself and is proven to be harmful psychologically. Further the author stresses that we need a ethical and moral theory along with benefits that accrue from discovering "non self" and "emptiness" via meditation. However, he claims that meditation will bring us close to truth and thus to morality and we will lose all the tribalism that besets modern people.

I enjoyed the book very much. The summary at the end are the core hypothesis on "non self", "dukkha", "tanha", "emptyness" and "conditioning" that the author has put forward as having a basis in evolutionary psychology. His descriptions on meditation will be useful to both beginners and experts in actually understanding the "Why" behind the processes. The book includes the authors personal experiences and quotes from various Buddhist masters he has practiced which is quite entertaining and very in-depth analysis.

A must for anyone who wants to understand Buddhism and meditation scientifically.

This book will make you a better Christian. One of the great losses in western Christianity is the mystical/meditative aspects of Christian spirituality.

This book was written by an evolutionary psychologist. It provides clear insights into how the human mind works. It is an operating guide to the human mind.

This book is especially insightful in the age of Trump where we all need to detach from the social/political cesspool.

Robert Wright has written a collaborative piece that combines the teachings and ideas of Buddhism with the science of psychology and science – particularly as it relates to evolutionary science, to highlight why Buddhism is true.

Importantly, Wright clarifies that science is as true as there is substantial corroborative evidence in favour of its theory and little evidence that is incompatible with it. And Wright does a fantastic job explaining why he believes Buddhism is "true" based on current modern day science - biological and psychological truths found in the theory of natural selection. Enjoy this review.

Listen and read the full review at The Hidden Why dot com. Leigh Martinuzzi - The Hidden Why Guy

While the title, as others have noted, is misleading, Robert Wright's "Why Buddhism is True" is a gift some of my friends will definitely unwrap under their Christmas trees this season. Here is a relatable human, albeit an intelligent one, reporting on the intangible benefits of what seems so simple yet remains so challenging: meditating.

"[T]he least likely meditators are the people who seem to most need the benefits of meditation," observes this least likely of meditators. Indeed, Wright puts himself at the Bobby Knight end of the spectrum of likely meditators . . . and for those of you who don't know the history of college basketball, Knight was the Type-A of Type-A coaches you would not want your offspring around, let alone coached by (sorry, Indiana!).

Wright strips the practice of its religious adorning and examines the elusive transformations a sitter can experience. Minus the mumbo-jumbo (sorry, devout Buddhists), his description enlightens, encourages, and gives reason to practice --- not just for oneself, but for the world, this world, this <i>tribalistic</i> world.

Highly recommended for its insights and for how it makes the ephemeral graspable.

I have to agree with some others about the first 20% being good and being relevant. Then the book wanders into way too much psychological stuff with no reference to Buddhism, or very little reference. I tried to slog through the middle in hopes that there would be a payoff but I had to give up. Very disappointing.

A great over view of secular Buddhism, and how some Buddhist viewpoints can be seen through the lens of evolutionary psychology. Fantastic personal anecdotes, and a brilliant tone and style. Absolutely loved it. One thing Mr. Wright talks about is how the tools of mindfulness can be used to prevent our evolutionary mind constructs from hijacking our behaviors. The human brain is a machine designed by natural selection to respond in pretty reflexive fashion to sensory input impinging...We have evolved to think the way we do, but in some ways the way we think is geared more towards hunter gatherer social structures than where we are currently at in modern society. I found his examples of this to be quite insightful. Being mindful of feelings with out being obedient to them, having more freedom of choice about how we react to experience. Mindfulness is our way out of the prison created by our creator, Natural Selection. Rebel!

1. Unlike many of the 1 star reviewers, I only have a rudimentary knowledge of Buddhism as well as meditation but that's ok because I'm assuming the author would say that this book isn't directed towards "the experts" but rather a rational and reasoned book as to "Why Buddhism is True." Furthermore, there is nothing to dissuade me that the author is a very learned individual.
2. The problem with this book are severalfold:
a: It's just frankly boring. Yes, I've read many non-fiction books and thus that is not the issue; this is just a poorly written and boring book.
b: Although the author purports to be an educated / empirically based individual, his arguments are often (largely) based on... theories and often contradictory statements. And of course, when something can't be explained, well just chalk that up to a "paradox"; you can call something a paradox, but that still doesn't make an illogical concept then logical or true.
3. Bottomline, no matter your background, if you want to be educated on this subject, definitely look towards other sources.

The author explores the rational case for Buddhism as a philosophy and a practice. This book is also a great introduction to the Buddha and his teachings, with lucid, accessible explanations. And, as your guide, a self-proclaimed skeptic. Wright has an agreeable tendency to challenge most every sweeping statement he makes immediately after he makes it, perhaps a benefit from his years of teaching these precepts to college students. As a bonus, the author displays a great, dry sense of humor, which I imagine works as well in the classroom as it does on the page.

The water gets a little deep in the middle chapters, where Wright wades into the research particulars that inform the assertion in the title of the book. I wasn't totally convinced, and it got a little dry. But I wasn't put off, either.

If you want to know your dharma from your dukkha, why the oft-quoted "all life is suffering" line as translated isn't quite on the mark, or -- perhaps most important -- the promise that mindful meditation holds for you and (gulp) the planet, you could benefit from giving this books a good read. You are likely to enjoy it.

In this book, the author endeavors to establish some sort of scientific psychological explanation of the veracity of some of the Buddhist philosophy. I find his demonstration unsatisfying on two grounds: firstly his interpretation of several core concepts of Buddhist philosophy such as impermanence, lack of independent existence/arising, and enlightenment is reductive ; secondly the psychological research he cites does not form a robust body of evidence. On the plus side, the authors seems sincere. But for me, it's not enough. The result is too superficial.

I stopped reading this book after investing the time it took to read 96 pages. Wright uses a lot of simple words to say nothing. Anyone with just a glimmer of knowledge of Buddism will learn nothing from this book. How all this nonsense got past the editor and publisher speaks to how low one can go and still get paid.

This book is the right bridge for an open-minded, even somewhat skeptical person who has curiosity about understanding the self, particularly the mind, and how Buddhism, as a philosophy, not a religion, has systematically revealed its essence, or perhaps more accurately, non-essence. This is because Robert Wright himself has approached his personal quest in a similar fashion, even addressing questions he anticipates a reader may have in a conversational, non-pedantic style. One can almost feel him doing this with a small group of close friends after midnight over wine on a deck after most party guests have left. In particular, his meditative experience may also resonate with some of those who have also gone on similar retreats, as I have. I highly recommend this book selectively to those people I know who are not die-hard scientists or religionists, but logical, curious, open-minded, and on a quest to figure out what makes them, and others tick.

Is reality an illusion? Robert Wright does a superb job in relating Western thinking and reason into more the more esoteric realm of meditation and Truth (capital "T" intentional). What is happiness? What is the inherent force living inside your self driving you to do what you do? Step aside from those questions and see more objectively where those questions arise. This is a book I will consume more than once as it is rich in concepts and theories that I cannot honestly admit to fully grasping on first go.

I would not recommend this book. The author attempts to conflate Buddhism with cognitive behavioral therapy, evolution, and other scientific disciplines which has the effect of muddling any real understanding of Buddhism. All of the spiritual and metaphysical aspects of Buddhism are left out and the book fails to resonate as a serious discussion of this great philosophy.

This is a great book, even considering that it is a very crowded topic in the books category right now. Wright examines (defends) Buddhism from the perspective of evolutionary psychology. His style is really effective, and he's great at choosing examples and metaphors that grab the reader's attention.

Robert Wright offers a secular and not a religious perspective about Buddhism in his book titled, Why Buddhism Is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment. Wright is a thoughtful writer who offers his personal perspective about meditation and its place in his life. Readers get to observe Wright and his struggles on silent retreats and with trying to meditate. Each of us is on some path away from suffering and from our delusions, and this book describes the path that Wright has chosen.

Rating: Four-star (I like it)

I loved this book. It was the final nail in the coffin of Buddhism for me. Along with Sam Harris’ “Waking Up” and Owen Flanagan’s “Bodhisattva’s Brain,” it broke the spell of secular mysticism. Because these books are written by brilliant, honest and diligent people, their attempts to create a secular, therapeutic Buddhism actually do a great job of outlining why the project is, if not pointless, then merely a hobby. Hobbies can be locally salutary for the hobbyist, but little more.

This narrowest slice of the Buddhism cake out of which Wright wants to make a worldwide meal — secular, Western, Theravada, Vipassina — seems to be a popular diversion for the aging atheist who wants a late-in-life grand project and some intellectual cover for wishful thinking. Trying to repackage, say, Catholicism, wouldn’t be exotic and inspiring enough. Instead, Wright enjoys the convert’s blindspots to an old (yet new) religion. Being a first gen Buddhist, he is unburdened by parents who serve as painful counterexamples. (Yup, I’m a second gen guy).

My biggest gripe with Wright is that he takes this narrowly defined notion, coats it in the novice’s zeal and then prescribes this “red pill” to the world. Yup, “The Matrix” is the best philosophical metaphor he can muster for the idea that “things are not what they seem.” Rather than a red pill, I’d see this as a red flag, a warning that the author can overlook some glaring and outlandish plot holes. (In the Matrix, the robot overlords use humans as batteries! They can create fine-grained illusory worlds, but can’t come up with better batteries than humans? Also, Keanu’s acting is about as lush and fruitful as a Zen rock garden.) I think Wright overlooks similarly large plot holes in the arcane, but sticky, spiderweb of Buddhist thought.

As far as I can see after reading this book, there really is no workable meditative practice (beyond the minimal self help version) that doesn’t rely on either 1) a personal preference that shouldn’t be universalized or 2) explicit or implicit supernatural beliefs. I’m pretty sure that, if there were a workable secular Buddhism, Wright would have found it.

He sure thinks he found it. In fact he thinks he's found nothing less than personal and global salvation. Tribalism, he feels, is the “biggest problem facing humanity.” And meditation is supposedly the end of that. But he’s too good a writer, and too rigorous a scholar not to reveal the holes in his own argument.

I’m not saying I’m going to surprise him with any of my objections. He’s done his homework. He’s even bravely interviewed quite a few “enlightened” meditators on his vlog. (Once they stop claiming to have quiet DMN and egoless minds, they describe what sounds like very normally middle class American lives.)

My whole argument is nothing new to Wright. Just as he remains enchanted with the “hard problem,” I’m sure he will not be swayed by my arguments. Instead, I’m hoping the astute reader will drink the last drop of skepticism that Wright cannot let pass his lips. Wright veers off at the last moment, losing a game of chicken with the truth. Excuse my armchair psychoanalysis, (he offers these anecdotes up in his book, so fair game) he loses his atheist nerve because he can’t disavow the memory of his mother and his own innate yearning for Jesus-style salvation.

The greatest counter examples to Wright’s most ambitious hope (the end of tribalism) are the millennia of Buddhist societies. Buddhist cultures are, on the whole, no better (though probably no worse) than any other culture. Certainly Buddhism and the Vedic traditions have proven themselves very compatible with war, tribalism, classism (Caste system!) and the oppression of women. The Tibetan word for “woman” literally mean “of inferior birth.” Also, Buddhism has not been a great incubator for science. Though the Dalai Lama is fond of science, it should be noted that he’s has to fly the scientists to him.

The move Wright makes to avoid this mountain of historical evidence is to narrowly define his project as “Western Buddhism.” It’s new and improved Buddhism! And it’s all about the mindfulness. Wright must slice the cake this thinly because, “Two of the most common Western conceptions of Buddhism—that it’s atheistic and that it revolves around meditation—are wrong; most Asian Buddhists do believe in gods, though not an omnipotent creator God, and don’t meditate.”

By focusing on mindfulness and on the individual benefits of that practice, Wright can claim to rescue the baby from the historical bath water. In other words, rather than answer the question of why most Buddhists don't want to meditate (not a great endorsement), and why most Buddhist cultures are equally flawed to non-buddhist, he takes shelter in the idea that those Buddhist cultures are flawed because they are full of the wrong type of Buddhists. If you meditate, then you are on the right path, he says.

But even amongst those who do meditate, there are plenty examples of jerks.Examples of evil meditators are shockingly common. Wright has to deal with the “Zen Predator.” Sexual exploitation of students by masters is so common — around 30% of US Zen schools have had public sex scandals. Wright (and Sam Harris) have both had to awkwardly wrestle with these all too frequent violations. Bless them both for at least admitting that this problem exists.

There are two main strategies to deal with the Buddhist version of the "problem of evil" -- what I call The Problem of the Evil Meditator. You either bite the bullet and admit that 1) enlightenment is indifferent to morality or 2) adopt incrementalism. The second is Wright’s main move. These evil masters just haven’t meditated enough, or they neglected to meditate broadly enough. Just as Wright claims (wrongly in my opinion) that evolution tends towards greater complexity, he also claims that meditation tends to lead one toward a more moral life. Hmmm.

Most traditional Buddhist will use the universal spackle of reincarnation to cover these cracks. You don’t like to meditate? You’re molesting your meditation students? You just haven’t lived enough lives. But the secular Buddhist can’t avail themselves of this dodge. So Wright shrinks down the reincarnation dodge to an ideal on the horizon. You are on a path defined by an unattainable end. It’s the journey not the destination. Masters are more ideals than reality. (Stoicism uses the sage as the same escape hatch.) I’m not buying it. The ideal end doesn’t justify the failed means.

Okay, you say, what about all the people whose lives have been improved by meditation? What about all this fMRI studies that show they are happier, more self-controlled? Well, Wright himself doesn’t lean very heavily on this neuro-proof. Wright sidesteps the current batch of fMRI research, relying instead on his personal anecdote. This is a smart move, because nothing beats “this worked for me” testimonials and they are by their nature beyond debunking.

So why doesn’t he use the research? I think it’s because, there is a signal in the research, but it doesn’t yet amount to much more than the tautology that those who like meditating like to meditate. The most exhaustive meta studies (that Wright ignores) show very weak signals. And the research generally fails to make a very important comparison of meditation to other similar activities. For instance, if meditating about playing guitar brings benefit, wouldn’t actually playing bring even greater benefit?

Regardless of the size of adept meditators’ PFC’s, it’s a fact that most Buddhist don’t meditate, and most people who start meditating stop. So if it’s a medicine, it’s a medicine few people want to take, and once you take it, you stop. It will be interesting to see how long Wright keeps it up.

But wait (OMG, you’re still reading?) The greatest and perhaps most ambitious part of this book is that Wright is trying to place the Buddha in Darwin’s lap. This is Wright at his best, dropping some mad EvoPsych knowledge. He does a good job of showing how natural selection has not selected for happiness. So far so good. And the modal concept of mind is fascinating. This part alone was therapeutic to me in a CBT sort of way. But then he makes another false step. He implies that since the Buddha diagnosed the problem (I’m not sure that is true, but let’s grant it) then perhaps Buddhism has also found the cure. But why would that be the case? This is like trying to get the molecular structure of Dopamine by reading Democritus.

So why does meditation help us understand that which the Buddha himself could not have known: The problem that natural selection doesn’t give a fig about our happiness; it only programs desires that lead not to happiness but to getting genes into the next generation? Wright suggests that by meditating on the nature of our consciousness we can get an essential added dimension of understanding, a better window into the exact way in which Evolution screwed us. It’s sort of a Mary’s Room of suffering. You can understand it intellctually, but you don’t grok it until you meditate.

This is just unfounded. Even if you are just talking about our inner minds, there is no good reason to believe that meditation reveals anything more real than the meanderings of an unskilled mind. Wright makes the weaker claim that it only reveals something true about our consciousness. Mystic Buddhists on the other hand, including most who call themselves secular, implicitly make the claim that meditation is revealing something not just about the mind, but about the nature of reality, but Wright kinda demures on that point. However, to the extent that he is a mysterian about consciousness itself, when he claims that meditation reveals something fundamental about consciousness, he is making an implicit ontological claim. This is in my opinion a hidden mystical claim. Certainly the idea that merely examining subjective consciousness reveals something more than subjective consciousness is questionable.

To show you why this is wrong, let me tell you something that happened to me during a guided meditation called a “body scan.” The instructor was focusing our attention on sensations in the body. Through her ignorance of anatomy, she suggested we should focus on the empty ventricles in our brains. There are no empty areas in the brain. But I felt them! I focused on them!

Since then I’ve experimented. You can create all sorts of false sensations just by suggesting them to yourself. I’ve meditated on lungs in my forearm. Try it. You will feel them there too. Little lungs in your forearm expanding and contracting with each breath. This should lead you not only to be skeptical about the accuracy of focusing on sensations, but the viability of this project at all. If we are to escape illusion, how can more illusion get us there? If you can suggest a sensation that isn’t actually real, if you can feel things about your body that are demonstrably false, by what lights do you argue that merely reflecting on the subjective experience of consciousness will reveal something truer and more real about consciousness?

It's the qualia dodge, the idea that by focusing on a subjective experience you are ipso facto having a subjective experience. But in this case it actually works against itself. If it's all false perception all the way down, on what foundation does your meditation instructor say "ah yes, you have entered the stream." There is no standard by which you can prioritize the authenticity of one meditative experience over another. Why is one illusion more insightful than another?

No, you say, the meditative focus is on something more primitive than this. You tune in to the field of consciousness itself. It supposedly exists between thoughts, between feelings, between sensations. You examine these entities to see that they are, like all of reality, not what they seem. And most importantly that there is no "self" doing the experiencing.

Sorry, I’m not buying it. Wright is mixing up his types of seeming. Being a self is not the same sort of seeming as, to use a Sam Harris example, when you see a coiled rope and think it’s a snake. Upon further inspection you realize it’s just rope. This is not an illusion, it is a misperception. There is objective standards by which you can evaluate this concept. The sense of being a self, however, is not a misperception of this type. It is a locally valid -- and irrefutable on its own terms -- perception. Why? Because we have skin and skull. These are not arbitrary boundaries. We have cell membranes. There is a lot of chemical self-making going on in our bodies. It’s not an illusion. Beyond the Hume style intellectual interrogation of self, I don't see how meditation can add anything.

Yes, get bored enough at a month long silent retreat, and you can start to hallucinate that you don’t end at your skin or, in Wright’s personal example, that your foot tingling is as much a part of you as a bird singing. But this is like saying by spinning in circles long enough you can sense the intrinsic spin of the universe. Biology can explain why we have a sense of dizziness after spinning. We are not feeling the universe, we are feeling the fluid in our ear. Presumably, biology can also explain someday why meditators have fairly predictable experiences. But then it will be an explanation like, spin around in circles enough, and your inner ear will get confused.

Being a self is not a misperception like mistaking a rope for a snake. It is an accurate perception like thinking the world is flat. You see, thinking the earth is flat is not actually an illusion. It is a perspectival truth. The earth is actually flat if you live on it. My cup stays on the table, the coffee stay in the cup. My level is level. It’s only if you want to look at Google earth, or launch a rocket, or wonder why you can see a ships mast over the horizon before the ship, etc. — it’s only under these situations that the world being round means something useful to you. But there is no normal human sensory input of the roundness of the earth, just as we can't see molecules.

Yes, the world is actually round, but when we see the world as flat we are not being fooled by our senses. It is, locally, actually truly flat. No amount of meditation on the actual roundness of the world will give you a vision of its actual roundness. There is no sense data for the roundness. You can meditate on the Earth’s roundness, you can conjure an image, but just like the lungs in my forearms, you will have “an experience”, but not really of the roundness. If you meditate on the Earth’s roundness, you are merely creating a suggested fantasy. This is exactly why there was no Buddhist science. The only reliable and productive way to see past seeming, to see past the Matrix, is not the red pill, it’s science. So sorry, you can't escape the notion of self on an experiential level. You are just being a good little suggestible participant in a very old scam.

We are stuck in our skull, like it or not. Buddhist meditation is simply replacing our perspectively valid sense of self with a hypnogogic implanted illusion. When meditators say they are experiencing that, they are certainly experiencing "something" and something that can be produced with reasonable frequency. However, they aren't actually experiencing what they say.

How do I make this claim? If you want there to be something being observed beyond the normal sensory welter, then it is actually on the Robert Wrights and the Sam Harrises of the world to explain what a brain can access that is getting into the skull. What exactly is the input? Sam Harris wants there to be a "field of consciousness" but then he's participating in a slightly more nuanced version of Deepok Chopra's "universal consciousness." This is not the sort of stuff for serious people.

In short, if everything is an illusion, how can you claim that the experience of "no self" isn't also an illusion? Wright wants to say that you are having the experiential dimension of the Darwinian truth. I buy the Darwinian part, but I see no good reason to buy the claim that highly contrived brain states (most people cannot attain it) are any more authentic than, say, an acid trip.

Most readers are reading this book for the more practical claims. For happiness and well being. If you love Buddhism and meditation, keep loving them. This book will preach wonderfully to your choir, though you might want to skim the parts where Wright whistles through the graveyard of spirituality. But If you do want to be a Buddhist, remember What Owen Flanagan makes beautifully clear in his book: if you want to be a Buddhist, you are having a mere preference for a type of happiness. It is not an ultimate, universal or superior happiness. It is a Buddhist definition of happiness. Actually, its only one type of Buddhism’s one definition of happiness.

When Wright’s instructor cautioned him, “I think you may have to choose between writing this book and liberation.” Wright obviously chose writing the book. “I’m a writer” he says, “and I consider pretty much everything I do grist for the mill.” Turns out Wright doesn't’ really want Buddhist Nirvana. Robert Wright’s nirvana involves writing books. It is no less of a Nirvana than his instructor’s, and I’m so glad that he didn’t let her talk him out of it. And I applaud him loudly when he says in the acknowledgments about his daughters, “If being enlightened would mean not seeing essence-of-wonderful-daughter when I look at them, I’m glad I haven’t attained enlightenment!” So please buy this book and read it carefully. Wright does a heroic job of trying to place the Buddha on Darwin’s lap. He lucidly explains the current understanding of evolutionary and neuro psychology. Where he fails is in his attempts to show that meditation is 1) a cure for the pains bestowed on us by natural selection and 2) a window into a deeper understanding of that world.

Feel zero regret if you don’t like meditation. You will have to be strong in your convictions though, because we are in the midst of a culture-wide mindfulness onslaught. If you don’t want to meditate before class or a work meeting, you will be putting yourself at a distinct cultural disadvantage. This is, after all, the new salvation of the cognoscenti, so if you reject it, you are likely to be branded a philistine or a wanton.

You should feel no more insult from these supercilious attitudes than you would from any hobbyist who condemns you for not enjoying their hobby. Wright doesn’t admit it (though I think he kind of does), but he likes Buddhism the way an avid ping pong player likes ping pong. It’s okay if ping pong is your thing (and should they ever do an fMRI study of ping pong nuts, they will see that their brains respond accordingly), but those of us who don’t like ping pong are off the hook.

I've read a lot of books about Buddhism, psychology, and mindfulness. I've also listed to quite a few lectures by Alan Watts. I think Robert Wright does a fantastic job of delving into evolutionary psychology, brain science, psychology, and Buddhism to explain the benefits of Buddhist meditation practices to reduce our suffering. Mr. Wright tackles some deep concepts and manages to explain them in a clear, engaging way. I found his book highly inspirational - I am redoubling my efforts to get a consistent meditation practice in place - thanks, Mr. Wright!

A most needed book when one is looking for explanations outside of traditional religions as a secular humanist. It is interesting to learn from the philosophy of Buddhism as it is contextualized within what science has discovered.

Robert Wright's latest book deserves to be recognized as an exceptional contribution to applied psychology. (Note that 'Buddhism' here means "Buddhism minus the super-naturalist doctrines about, e.g., karma and reincarnation.") Very readable as well. Some parts can be skipped, e.g., where he tries to defend the arguments of the Second Sermon. But this is an extremely powerful framework for navigating day-to-day life in a psychologically healthy as well as moral manner. (Think of it as "everyday therapy" bundled with an "everyday ethics.") I have some questions about the analogy, late in the book, between Mara and our drives for evolutionary fitness. But this too is a remarkable idea, well worth exploring.

Don't waste your money. The author's style is indulgent rambling that is meant to be clever but is mind numbing instead. There are occasional interesting thoughts but they are lost in the jungle of rubbish. I am shocked at the 62% of high ratings.

This book will bring you a far greater understanding of what modern “Western“ Buddhist thinking is about from a non-Buddhist and psychology perspective.

You may not agree with all that is discussed, but the depth of explanation will “enlighten” your appreciation for what a better world this can be with a more mindful view of it.

Robert Wright's easy reading and deeply thoughtful book arrives at a time when many students are dropping the mystical aspects of Buddhism, such as reincarnation, and searching for a more rigorous foundation for meditation and Buddhism. Wright combines his expertise in human evolution and his grasp of current psychological research with his own personal experience from long retreats and his probing conversations with Buddhist leaders. Along the way, he provides penetrating answers to questions teachers rarely discussed (such as, why concentrate on the breath, and what's the point of focusing on physical sensations of emotions) as well as answers to questions never asked (such as, can emotions be false). I've purchased hundreds of Buddhism books and read nearly all of them. I wish I had started with this one. Thank you, Robert Wright.

Ok, but basically a compendium of straw man arguements. Not recommended. I'm long time meditator with many teachings in Zen and Tibetan techniques, a PhD in Psychology/Philosophy/Religion with a dissertation scientific study of zazen.

As a psychotherapist, this book is a game changer. The book has an immediate impact but also has an aftertaste that keeps coming back sweeter and sweeter. The science, the humor, and Robert's personal experience and transparency make this book one of the best books I have read. Moreover, for those who follow Dr. Dan Siegel, Stephen Porges, and Thick Nhat Hahn this book brings out the flavor of these authors delightfully.

The most robust effort yet at turning a modern understanding of the mind into practical knowledge. The title was certainly risky, and does present a challenge when advocating the book to certain people, but the meat of the book is really impressive.

The author made such a wonderfully compelling case for the value of mindfulness meditation that I feel inspired to renew my effort to pursue a regular meditation practice. He came across as so down to earth and relatable that I felt like he was talking directly to me and I had trouble putting the book down. He answered a lot of the questions I had about Buddhism and meditation in a way that really made sense. For all you spiritual seekers out there, this is a must read!!!

This is a fabulous book for those of us who are on a spiritual journey who also need the explanation of how and why we do the things we do. This book is just what I needed and will help me to take my practice to a higher level. So greatful that I found this book!!!!

This is simply a terrific book! Wright is a wonderful writer and the way in which he explains esoteric Buddhist concepts is both understandable and precise. I've read many books on meditation and Buddhism from authors that fall in the "skeptic" camp–Sam Harris, Stephen Batchelor, etc.–and "Why Buddhism is True" is the best I've read so far. I can't recommend this book enough!

While not a thorough description of Buddhism or meditation techniques, this would be my first recommendation to anyone who is interested in getting started with either topic. With a light-hearted tone it addresses very weighty concepts and left me with a newfound outlook on my meditation practice.

This is a book I wanted to like, and initially, Mr. Wright had me hooked. Yet, the further I ventured into Why Buddhism is True The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment, though I found potential truth in the benefits of meditation, and possibly the Buddhist way of life, at least to make life “better”, the authors redundancy, sometimes over use of colloquialism and playing rather loosely with the concept of natural selection shout out for some major editing.

Most of the manuscript deals with peeling away, like the layers of an onion, our thoughts, perceptions, feelings, and affect upon how we look at the world in which we live. We superimpose superficialities on our pleasures, a deeper pleasure would come if we could somehow taste “wine”, unencumbered by beliefs about it that may or may not be true about the wine, and thus life. The author writes about the “essences” we sense in things, that they inhabit the things we perceive, when in fact, they are constructions of our mind, with no necessary correspondence to reality. Things come with stories, and the stories, whether true or false, shape how we feel about things and thus shape the things themselves, giving them the form we perceive.

The author writes we are yoked to a certain unsatisfactory nature in life, “dukkha”, with its source “Tanha” translated as thirst or craving, and that meditation allows us to “weaken the grip they exert”on our lives. Yet, Wright
drones on and on repeating the same concepts over and again in a different way almost as if to fill the pages.

The author also plays rather loosely with the theory of evolution, and natural selection in an effort to support his thesis. He repeatedly anthropomorphizes Evolution via Natural Selection. The processes do not build, design or create, but are totally random.

He also writes, “Another possibility is that a certain affinity for the universe is a kind of default state of consciousness, a state to which it returns when its not caught up in the inherently distorting enterprise of operating a self. But here we are venturing beyond psychology, into the philosophical question of what consciousness is. And my general view on that question is: beats me.” Huh? May I suggest to Mr. Wright that he read Julian Jaynes work, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of The Bicameral Mind. I’m not submitting that Jaynes was 100% correct with his thesis, but it makes sense in regard to Wright’s book, but that is beyond the scope of this review.

Perhaps Robert Wright’s Why Buddhism is True The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment would have been better titled as the Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment. He writes, “I don’t call myself a Buddhist, because traditional Buddhism has so many dimensions- of belief, of ritual, that I haven’t adopted...” Perhaps he has not actually taken the red pill he uses with his The Matrix analogy.

This book manages to carve out a truly unique path in an over-saturated sea of western Buddhist analyses. It is a wonderful and useful book. If you meditate, or are intrigued by meditation, and grew up in the west, you need to read this book.

If you are interested in how modern research in evolutionary psychology & neuroscience validates ancient Buddhist concepts such as "emptiness" and "not-self" - and in how meditation enables one to apprehend these concepts - read this book!

Robert, if you are reading this, thank you for making the effort to write such a profoundly important and immensely helpful book. For everyone else, do yourself a favour: ignore everything you have ever found in the self-help or popular psychology section and read this.

I find the title a bit ironic. Wright is a secular Buddhist who takes issue with such core teachings of the Buddha as karma and reincarnation. From his perspective, then, not all of Buddhism is "true." Secular Buddhists endeavor to reduce all aspects of the mind to the mechanistic activities of matter, and thus deny the existence of the spiritual or transcendental aspects of the Buddha's teaching. Their main motivation is the false belief that they are somehow making Buddhism more compliant with science by doing so.

Well-written. Given the author's self-disclosed sensitivity to stressors, I wonder if the long-standing doctrinal differences between the Theravada and Mahayana schools arise to a large degree from physical differences (genetic-phenotypic-epigenetic-etc.) between the average adherents of each major school of Buddhism. Wonder, for example, if things like magnesium or methyl folate supplementation would materially accelerate the Theravada enlightenment process for at least some Theravada practitioners. After all, not all the anxious (and therefore potentially hostile) people in the world can go to southeast Asia for several years of hermitic meditation, or even afford 1 or 2 week meditation retreats.

The book is about mindfulness from a Darwinist point of view, not about Buddhism. Robert Wright's writing is very easy to read on one hand, on the other I just hated it. Verbal diarrhea. This topic needs to be comprehended through feelings as he himself says, meditation needs to be practiced. It was like trying to understand what water is by reading about it - you don't need to read a book about water, you need to see water, touch water, play or swim in the water. A lot of interesting facts, but it will give you very very very little in terms of holistic understanding of Buddhism. His own musings about what Buddhha meant or didn't mean from his rookie point of view was not interesting at all.

I came across this book as I was perusing the latest Kindle offerings and I just read the description of the book and a few reviews. I am an old man now and have been practicing Buddhism for 50 years. I have considerable monastic experience and have received teaching sanctions from various traditions and hold the title role she is a master. In the last few years beginning with the books by Stephen Batchelor there has been a plethora of offerings on so-called secular Buddhism. Prof. Owen Flanagan Dr. Susan Blackmore and now this.
I have yet to read any of them that have any real grasp of fundamental Buddhist philosophy even though some of them may have impressive academic credentials or are long time meditators. While one can argue reasonably well that there are no bodhisattvas to dance on the head of a pin it does not follow therefore that Buddhism can be ripped from its metaphysical context and even remotely resemble the Buddha's eightfold path.

The great granddaddy of Mahayana philosophy Nagarjuna made it abundantly clear repeatedly that the position these people take is in effect nihilism and worthless. First of all there's no such thing as Buddhism secondly there's no such thing as science. Both are just words that describe activities and ideas. Then we get into the" truth" this is like diving into a cesspool to retrieve a piece of moldy bread.

But let me ask the obvious if our mind is extinguished upon the physical death of our body and all our thoughts and actions a biophysical pinball game why strive for enlightenment? Why strive for enlightenment anyway if you don't know what something is how do you know you want it? If something is true is that eternally true? Certainly not physical theory we know that has changed, certainly not history which is even more ephemeral than memory. Don't slander the sky by looking through a pipe.

Any book that purports to be about philosophy, psychology, etc. is clearly "all over the place". Author needs to settle down and focus. As a committed dharma practitioner, whose hubby chose this as his first exposure to this, I'm sad for him and all other novice readers.

I don't think so. This book is primarily addressed to meditators and since I don't 'meditate' (Amitabha) I found it rather one-sided and confused. Others have mentioned the shortcomings of 'secular buddhism' and I agree. He needs to better understand the Mahayana which represents the 'evolution' of the Buddhadharma.

What Mr. Wright does with 'emptiness' is dreadful and embarrassing.

"Seekers cut off confusion in every state of mind, but the mind that does the cutting off is a thief. When one thief sends off another, when will you realize the basis of speech and silence?" Pao Chih (Zen Reader by Thomas Cleary)

I hate to give a poor rating to a book that I got so much from, however, for $14 I expect the digital version to be error-free. But, the search function does not work, which is especially important for a non-fiction book with so much new terminology to master. Simon & Schuster screwed-up by not thoroughly testing the Kindle edition before releasing it.

There is no way to explain the insight obtained from Tibetan Buddhism in lieu of direct experience. When I was young, I achieved enlightenment through active meditation. Without that experience, you cannot explain to others this very pragmatic practice of self-enlightenment in words.

Why was this book published? That is my question. Just another male person trying to pose as an authority on Buddhism for our culture. Saying silly things like meditation is for understanding scientific truths. And of course, he being some sort of scientist would naturally corral Buddhism into his neo-Darwinian yard. No, he didn't have to learn that much, he didn't have to study Sanskrit or another Asian language concomitant with the rise of Buddhism. Like other American males who claw their way up the Buddhist ladder to become "experts" (which is an oxymoron for true Buddhists) he just has to read some translated material and go on retreats and have weird experiences, and then consider himself of special import. And, my friend, you could be like me. A real scientific Buddhist who proves real things to real people.

If you want to know something about Buddhism don't waste your money on an evolutionary psychological perspective because it's not relevant to the teaching and is a waste of time. Read a book written by a real Buddhist. This book spends an eternity on mumbo jumbo nonsense and barely covers the true message and teaching of the Buddha.

This is a poorly constructed self help book, not a psychology book. I was really excited about the concept of this book but unfortunately he doesn't have a strong grasp on the research he includes. It's clear from his writing he doesn't understand the theory of evolution, specifically the concept of natural selection. He even calls himself out for talking about it incorrectly (on page 3) then continues to talk about it incorrectly. Considering this is a foundation for his argument, it's not worth reading the rest of the book.

Although the book's title is as alluring as the powdered doughnuts to which the author frequently refers, his thesis -- that Buddhism is 'true' because its practice lifts the veil of delusion humankind inherits from the natural selection process ("NSP") -- has a hollow sound when tapped. He claims, for example, that NSP, in its inexorable drive to deliver our genes to the next generation, deludes us into thinking that overconsumption (those doughnuts again) is a good thing. Buddhist mindful practice, he states, frees us from our pathetic pods, to remind each of us that we're nothing more than sentient clumps of decaying flesh. While I certainly agree that mindful meditation is a great stress reliever, this has little to do with whether Buddhism is 'true' (in fact, the author specifically refrains from analyzing Buddhism's metaphysical precepts...such as reincarnation). And if Buddhism is indeed true and will reveal NSP's destructive delusion, will following Buddhism prevent our genes from getting to the next generation? If not, then wouldn't NSP encourage us to all be Buddhists, thereby rendering this book and its dodgy title unnecessary?

Five stars, recommended.

Robert, if you read this review, please please read Culadasa's book The Mind Iluminated (if you don't believe it's worth it, read some the store reviews before). As K. Knox wrote: “A Complete Meditation Guide, understates this astonishing book's comprehensiveness and profundity by half. This is a 475 page long magnum opus that's exponentially more useful than all of the previous guides to meditation I've read".

BWebster has written an accurate and fair critical review of Wight's "Buddhism" "book" here, so read that review (not the book).

This "book," in my opinion, is intellectually irresponsible and totally self-serving. On page 120 or so, I closed it and put it (along with Wright's The Moral Animal) in the recycle bin: a first. Unfortunately, I've known a lot of true narcissists (people with narcissistic personality disorder) in my life, and I feel confident that that's what we have in Wright: a true narcissist; and that's - to answer BWebster's question - why he's written this book: to narcissistically hoodwink the unsuspecting into thinking he's brilliant (more brilliant than Stephen Jay Gould, anyway, right?). Do yourself a favour: avoid being hoodwinked and don't buy or read this book. Your intellectual efforts will be much better sent elsewhere.

What a bunch of BS. The argument he and Buddhism gives for self/no self contradicts itself so you don't have to. Just a bunch of double talk. I put even bad books in my book shelves when I'm done reading. I actually threw this one out!

Ignore the blurbs, it’s still a bad book

There are several reasons for that.

First, IMO, Wright is overrated. I rated “The Evolution of God” as a one-star. This one had a chance to get lucky, even though it was starting minus 1 star due to the title alone. That title, and ding, along with puffery from too many others, though, cost it that chance to do better.

Now, within specific reasons it’s a bad book.

First, ev psych isn’t nearly as true as Wright claims. And, as I said in the review of “The Evolution of God” if you want to apply something like that to religion, try the evolutionary anthropology of Scott Atran or Pascal Boyer.

Second, the Stephen Batchelor denatured, demetaphyticized “Buddhism” that Wright presents isn’t Buddhism. (Wright even backhandedly, and out of the side of his mouth, admits this in the first chapter.

Third — or, if it is, then Unitarianism is just as much Christianity as is what Wright et al call “Buddhism.” And, it’s not.

Fourth — If Unitarianism WERE that, yet, nobody writes a book called “Christianity is true” unless they’re a fundamentalist.

That alone should show what’s wrong with the book.

But BuJews like Sam Harris on one said, and BuGoys like Wright et al on the other, find millions of people who can still be conned this way.

Fifth, it is possible, indeed, that Buddhist secularism has special mediation insights derived from its religious roots. It’s also possible Christianist secularism does, too. It’s also possible neo-Stoicism does, and derived from its original philosophical roots. Maybe self-hypnosis does, derived from original empirical results followed by trial-and-error fine tuning. Or that modern science does, and influenced by a Buddhist-derived general idea of mediation, but NOT by anything specific.

(From what I know, there is indeed at least some degree of truth to all of the above. That’s from reading a new bio of Rorschach, on precursors to modern science; from some experience with self-hypnosis; from a philosopher friend who teaches neo-Stoicism counseling; and more. And, much of these things started happening before Batchelor, or precursors, started popularizing Buddhist-derived meditation ideas in the west.)

Sixth, note my adjectives two paragraphs above. Non-metaphysicians within Unitarianism would practice Christianist secularism, not Christianity. (Not all Unitarians are non-metaphysical.)

Wright seems to make the assumption that only Buddhism, among world religions, has unique insights that can be secularly distilled. Tosh. I haven’t even mentioned Taoist secularism. (Confucianism? I agree with many philosophers of religion that it’s a philosophy, not a religion.)

None of this is to say that meditation is bad. I think it can be good, indeed, for reasons in the book and beyond. So, don’t feel discouraged if the meditation Wright derives from Buddhist secularism doesn’t float your boat.

Seventh, Wright ignores the irony of people — selves — reporting on the idea that there is no self. This is part of a larger issue that certain Buddhist principles should be ineffable. Wright also ignores this connection to karma, vis-à-vis what is, and is not, reincarnated, and why the whole idea of karma is senseless at best and repulsive at worst if there is no “self” yet we have punishing karmic reincarnations based on actions of past selves.

Of course, he ignores it in part by presenting Buddhist secularism as “true,” and as true without having to look at its religious and metaphysical background.

In fairness, he does note that issues related to this are raised by “maverick” Buddhists.

Eighth, Wright, like other BuJews and BuGoys ignores that real, actual Buddhism has its own version of fundamentalism, violence against other religions, etc. Take the 969 Movement, leading the attack against Muslim Rohingya in Burma.

And, no, please no “no true Scotsman” claims that this is modern, and just one small offshoot. Before Buddhism in its Indian homeland went over the mountain to China and then was pushed out of India by a new, reformed Hinduism (Vedism or Brahamnism or similar are better terms for the main religion of India at the time of Siddhartha Gautama), Buddhists are documented as persecuting Jains.

Beyond Buddhism, he gets things wrong elsewhere. That includes muddling emotions and instincts, which he does so baldly and badly.

Finally, the title.

Often, it may be an editor at a publishing house that chooses a title. In this case, I highly doubt it; I’m sure that’s Wright’s baby. It is provocative and smug as well as wrong.

==

If Wright were just offering up a book called “Buddhist-based meditation tools and ideas,” he might get another star. But, he earned the low rating.

I will wait for the paper edition to appear. But I wanted to comment. By all means, practices to mindfulness are worthwhile. But forget the trendy Buddhism and its arcane terminology. I'd ask, why cannot the Buddhists of Burma, including the monks and nuns, get it right? Why did the Zen priests (Zen priests! ) of wartime Japan drill with rifles? I am no partisan for any religion, but I note that in Europe during the same war, the Jehovah's Witnesses refused to do military work, even as prisoners in concentration camps, even when their refusal lead to their execution; in fact, their equanimity for their own deaths shamed their executioners. I note also the present Dalai Lama's comments on the desirability of Socialism. Perhaps Buddhist learning or practice does not guarantee a benefit to all understanding? Did Buddhist learning greatly advance progress in Tibet?