Why Buddhism is True Book Summary

Book Summary

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Brief Summary

The main reason why humans are constantly unfulfilled and unhappy is that they rely on a system of thinking and acting that is based on feelings, not truths. Our minds are designed to lie to us so that our species can better survive the harsh conditions of our ancestors. But we don't live in the same world as those ancestors did. Our bodies no longer need certain urges and certain reactions to stimuli. We have different goals, different drives. We no longer have to be driven by self-interest and the need to continue the species.

So, we need to take a closer look at ourselves — and to clean the lens we use to view the world outside of us.

Meditation can help to clarify the world for us. We can view our surroundings — and ourselves — in a more inclusive, truthful way, which, in the end, will help us and the rest of our society to live a clearer, more beautiful, more satisfying life.

About the Author

Robert Wright is a journalist, New York Times bestselling author, and co-founder/editor-in-chief of the popular video blog site, Bloggingheads.tv. He has written for multiple high-profile newspapers such as The New York Times, Time, and The Wall Street Journal.

In addition to this, Wright has taught courses on both psychology and religion at The University of Pennsylvania and at Princeton University, and created an online course titled "Buddhism and Modern Psychology." In 2017, he took on the position of Visiting Professor of Science and Religion at New York's Union Theological Seminary.

Wright was born in Lawton, Oklahoma. He currently lives in Princeton, New Jersey with his wife, two daughters, and two dogs, the latter of which have made several appearances on Bloggingheads.tv.

Topics

Religion & Spirituality

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Key Insights

In Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment, New York Times bestselling author Robert Wright uses both science and his own experiences to prove that meditation may be the key to improving, not just your own life as an individual, but the lives of everyone else around you as well.

Unhappiness, according to the teachings of Buddhism, is caused by not seeing the world clearly. We see everything through a distorted lens; everything we think or do is affected by some internal force or idea.

The key to real, true satisfaction with your life is finding a way to see the world more clearly. The way to do this is through meditation and the realization that humans are self-centered, biased beings whose point of view is limited to their own experience.

With a more objective view, we can better see the beauty in ourselves, other people, and the world around us. We can lessen the anxiety, the hatred, and the regret we feel over past experiences and live a fuller, more fulfilling life.

Wright supports this theory through the use of philosophy, psychology, and even neuroscience, proving that Buddhism isn't simply a religion, but a path that can lead to a bettering of ourselves and of the entire human race.

Reality Is an Illusion

Both Buddhists and experts in the field of evolutionary psychology agree on one thing above all: reality is an illusion. Feelings lie; we all make up our own version of reality that informs our decisions and perceptions of what is going on around us. True reality can only be perceived when one detaches and distances themselves psychologically.

According to evolutionary psychology, humans are programmed to do two things in life: survive and contribute to the expansion of the species. To achieve these goals, the mind works to hide certain truths by making one feel certain things, even if these feelings are false.

Buddhism also tells us that feelings are not to be trusted, because they keep us from understanding the whole, unbiased truth. Just as our hunter-gatherer ancestors were programmed to have feelings that led to forming social bonds for survival and increasing the chances of having intercourse for breeding purposes, we are driven by feelings that urge us in a direction that maybe we don't necessarily need to go in.

In fact, it is this disconnect between the feelings, thoughts, and urges we have and the fact that these things don't apply in the modern world that serves to make us unhappy on a deep, mental and emotional level.

Wright gives the example of sexual desire once being just a tool to enable humans to better reproduce. But now, with the invention of things like birth control and pornography, sex has taken on a whole new form. It isn't just a way to propagate the human race, it can be an act carried out for a whole host of other reasons in a lot of other ways, or not at all.

This is a huge problem, as humans were made...