Why Buddhism Is True by Robert Wright

I stumbled upon Robert Wright’s book at a newsagent in Heathrow Terminal 4 before my flight to Moscow. I bought it impulsively, and read it fully from back to back in about two weeks. I usually have a pretty long (and always growing) list of books that I want to read but make a point to leave some room for spontaneity if something catches my eye. This was my first book about Buddhism, a subject that has fascinated me in the past, and the book certain opened my eyes to a fairly new-ish perspective.

My first thought was: so what exactly a book about Buddhism is doing on the bestseller shelf in a busy airport? This has to be a mistake. And what exactly about Buddhism can be ‘true’… Are we talking about a religion? A secular philosophy of life? An ideology? An “all of the above”?

The author, does give a couple of hints early on in the book by saying that there are many different types of Buddhism and they all seem to be interwoven with paradoxes, some of which will make “your head will explode” if you approach intellectually. This did not discourage me from reading on. The book refers to what one may call Western Buddhism; a mostly secular approach to life and its issues but not devoid of a spiritual angle with meditation being its centrepiece.

I have been a casual and sporadic meditator for about a year myself, and probably have not been doing it properly or seriously enough to reap any meaningful benefits worthy writing home about. The basic concept of mediation, as the book goes on to discuss, is the effort to create in your mind a distance between what happens in the real world (out of your control) and the associated feelings and emotions that tag along almost automatically (those are indeed within our control). This mismatch between cause and response, is an often inappropriate, counterproductive (is routed deeply in our evolutionary codes) and causes all sorts of suffering, unhappiness, lack of fulfilment, disagreements with others etc. Learning to focus (through meditation) enough on those very feeling (and create that distance with your ‘real self') will cause them to become less potent and more distant. This will then bring clarity and you will see the world “as it is”, truly. Hence, the title of the book : Why Buddhism is “True").

As the author explains:

“Think of yourself as having, in principle, the power to establish a different relationship with your feelings, thoughts, and perceptions - the power to disengage from some of them, the power to in absence, disown them, to define the bounds of your self that excludes them.”

The assumption here is that it makes sense to be deeply suspicious of our feelings and our own reactions to the events of the outside world. In a certain sense, a big part of Buddhism is that all of the things going on in your head are not necessarily to be taken very seriously. Again, evolutionary psychology explains why a lot of these feelings are not to be trusted (and the book gives various examples of this). Meditation isn’t a way out of any associated suffering; but it does helps us transcend (key word here) it by teaching us to see it clearly for what it really is, and by making us more attuned to our emotive impulses and the behaviours they produce.

So far so good? If yes, we can develop our thinking just a tad deeper.

So meditation begins as a modest pursuit …. a way to slow down, relieve stress or anxiety… but it can really lead to profound realisation about the nature of things and down a deeply philosophical and spiritual endeavour. Few of interesting areas I picked up in the book on this:

1- Mediation as a key tool to getting rid of “elusions” or biases which can often highjack and sidetrack our thinking; “This wine is amazing because its expensive”, “This candidate will be fantastic because he graduated from Harvard”. I could not help but think of Daniel Kahneman’s “Thinking Fast and Slow” book dedicated to this subject of behavioural biases. The book’s main thesis is about acknowledging and observing the biases, that it will help you understand how your mind works and how to avoid the most obvious pitfalls.

2- Are we really in control of our lives? An aptly titled chapter of the book: “Your CEO is Missing in Action” refers to the fact that our thoughts really think for themselves and independently of real “you”, events happen unexpectedly all the time, and that the conscious mind really is not in control of things (or at minimum, much less in control that you think). The more you try to control outcomes & the associated thoughts, feelings, emotions the more you are likely to be disappointed with the outcomes and stressed about them. Therefore entering on a path of “letting go” provides what would at least seem an interesting alternative if not a famous paradox in itself (how can you possibly be more in control, if you let go?).

3- The deeply philosophical subject of “non-self”…” The Buddha’s discussion on engagement suggests a simple idea: “liberation consists of changing the relationship between your consciousness and the things you normally think as ‘yours’ : your feelings, your thoughts, your pains, your struggles. Once you realise that those things are “non-self” the relations jump of your consciousness to them becomes more like contemplation than engagement.. And the you that remains is the liberated conciseness.”

The last point takes a while to get your head around, and I am not sure I am fully there. But that doesn’t matter…The book is written well, provides plenty of food for thought ; a great primer on the topic and supplies you with encouragement to begin thinking about the world around you for yourself. Truly. Enjoy.