Why Buddhism is True

The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment

paperback, 336 pages

Published May 8, 2018 by Simon & Schuster.

View on OpenLibrary

4 stars (20 reviews)

A journey through psychology, philosophy, and lots of meditation that shows how Buddhism holds the key to moral clarity and enduring happiness.

Robert Wright famously explained in The Moral Animal how evolution shaped the human brain. The mind is designed to often delude us, he argued, about ourselves and about the world. And it is designed to make happiness hard to sustain.

But if we know our minds are rigged for anxiety, depression, anger, and greed, what do we do? Wright locates the answer in Buddhism, which figured out thousands of years ago what scientists are only discovering now. Buddhism holds that human suffering is a result of not seeing the world clearly—and proposes that seeing the world more clearly, through meditation, will make us better, happier people.

In Why Buddhism is True, Wright leads readers on a journey through psychology, philosophy, and a great many silent retreats to …

3 editions

Review of 'Why Buddhism is True' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

I should say as a preface that one of the things I need to work on is my tendency to be snarky about things that may be exactly what someone else needs, but that just don't appeal to me where I am right now. Having said that, I expect that there will still be some snark below, but be assured that prior drafts were much worse.

My main criticism of this book is that, in the service of making the case that Buddhism (or a subset of it) is compatible with science (or a subset of it), the book presents superficial, and in some cases misleading, pictures of both.

Also the author drops a lot of names, which always annoys me. :)

If you haven't read the book yet, and are curious about Buddhism or doubtful that it could be true, I certainly wouldn't discourage you from reading it! And …

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