Why Buddhism Is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment

by Robert Wright

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Robert Wright makes the case that core Buddhist insights about the nature of suffering, the self, and perception are validated by modern evolutionary psychology and neuroscience. He argues that natural selection designed human minds to be deluded in specific ways, and that meditation offers a path to seeing through these illusions. The book presents a secular, evidence-based Buddhism stripped of supernatural beliefs yet faithful to its deepest philosophical claims.

Published:: 2017
Pages:: 336

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In the Conversation

In this collection, Why Buddhism Is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment references 4 other books.

It draws on The Moral Animal, Waking Up and The Righteous Mind.

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What This Book Draws On

The books Wright references and why each one mattered to the argument.

Wright draws extensively on his own earlier work in The Moral Animal, applying evolutionary psychology's framework of innate cognitive biases and emotional modules to explain why Buddhist diagnosis of suffering is scientifically accurate.

References

The Moral Animal

by Robert Wright

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Wright engages directly with Sam Harris's Waking Up, sharing Harris's secular approach to meditation while pushing further into evolutionary explanations for why mindfulness dissolves the illusion of a unified self.

References

Waking Up

by Sam Harris

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Wright invokes Jonathan Haidt's moral psychology from The Righteous Mind, particularly the rider-and-elephant metaphor, to explain how meditation helps override automatic emotional reactions shaped by natural selection.

References

The Righteous Mind

by Jonathan Haidt

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The book's treatment of cognitive illusions and motivated reasoning connects to Kahneman's System 1 and System 2 framework in Thinking, Fast and Slow, with Wright arguing that meditation is a tool for shifting from automatic to reflective processing.

References

Thinking, Fast and Slow

by Daniel Kahneman

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Intellectual Lineage

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Builds on (2 layers deep)

Directly cites

The Moral Animal

Waking Up

The Righteous Mind

Thinking, Fast and Slow

2 steps back

The Selfish Gene

The Origin of Species

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