Why Buddhism is True
Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Mediation and Enlightenment by Robert Wright.
🚀 The Book in 3 Sentences
We have a relationship with feelings that clouds are vision. Buddhist truths state that if we could view feelings from a more critical perspective and less judgement.
Natural selection has led our brains to evolve in a way that feels rational and logical. We think we understand our motivations when we tell consistent, coherent, faltering stories. But in truth we do not.
The 'essences' we sense in things really exist, that they inhabit things we perceive bit they are constructions of our mind, with no necessary correspondence to reality.
🎨 Impressions
The ideas are explored over the course of the book, and develop insightfully with each chapter. Little stories and anecdotes of Robert's own experiences with meditation and Buddhism makes the book feel more personal and relatable.
There is a mixture of neuroscience, history, philosophy, physiology, evolution, old scriptures all wrapped in one which gives an overview and complete picture.
The science discussed is less about the proven benefits of practices like mediation, and instead focused on why it makes sense to mediate based on evolution, and the way the brain works. It is therefore less about detailed journals and more understandable to think about how a tribe belaboured thousands of years ago and why Buddhist principles help us reconnect with this.
How I Discovered It
After listening to The Farnham Street podcast with Naval, where he states that he likes the unfalsifiable parts of Buddhism, I thought I too should understand some of the more science behind he ideas.
Who Should Read It?
Anyone who is unsure about meditation, or its benefits. Or if interested in how Buddhism fits into evolution and our current understanding of the brain.
✍️ My Top 3 Quotes
Don't try and use what you learn from Buddhism to be a better Buddhist; use it to be a better whatever-you-already-are" - Dalai Lama
Everything is in flux and nothing is permanent"
Suppose, as a thought experiment - that your goal wasn't living as long as possible but rather attaining the clearest vision possible."
📒 Summary + Notes
We are all under illusions, that add up to a very large-scale warping of reality and disorientation
We often pursue things with an unbalanced view of the future. We spend more time envisioning the perks that a promotion will being than envisioning he headaches.
Feelings:
It is in the nature of feelings to make it hard to tell which are the valuable ones and which are harmful. To distinctly recognise the reliable from the misleading. One thing feelings all have in common is they were originally designed to convince you to follow them. They feel truth and right almost by definition. They actively discourage you from viewing them objectively. Feelings are designed by natural selection to represent judgements about things, evaluations of them. Natural selection wants you to experience things as ether good or bad. The Buddha believed that the less you judge things - including the contents of your mind - the more clearly you'll see them and the less deluded you will be.
We have in principle the power to establish a different relationship with your feelings and thoughts and impulses and perceptions - the power to disengage with some of them, to disown them. To define the bounds of yourself in a way that excludes them. Think of some degree of liberation being possible.
Self-Delusion:
It would have been to the benefit of the genes of our hunter-gather ancestors, to convince the world that were coherent, consistent actors who have things under control.
From natural selections point of view, it is good if you tell a coherent story about yourself, to depict yourself as a rational, self-aware actor. So whenever your actual motivations are not accessible to the part of the brain that communicates with the world, it would make sense for that part of the brain to generate stories about your motivation.
It also makes sense that we would tell flattering stories about ourselves. Coherent, consistent stories but ones in which we fail, would also likely not lead to friends and collaborators.
Meditation aims to get close enough to feelings to take a good look at them, and gives you a critical distance from then. Their grip loosens and if it loosens enough they are no longer a part of you.
