Why Buddhism is True

A lively, charming look into Buddhist philosophy and its benefits to a Western practitioner. I was surprised to see that Robert Wright hasn't written a bunch of other Buddhist books, since this was a dense-yet-approachable look into the deepest pits of what makes Buddhism Buddhism, and he just sounded like a long-time practitioner and Buddhist scholar. But dude's just a smart journalist! And, yes, okay, he has been meditating some pretty hardcore Vipassana for the last ~20 years. Fair.

So this book is going to appeal to the mostly-secular American Buddhist - it's an intellectual and well-researched look at how meditation, coupled with certain Buddhist “truths” about the nature of identity, of reality, and of individuality, can be “proven” by, well, a lot of evolutionary psychology and behavioral economics research. Wright uses humor - even CHEEK - and anticipates the skepticism of a secular Western reader. I'm already in the choir, so no need to convince me of the not-self or of how sitting quietly on your butt for N minutes per day is valuable. If anything, I felt inspired to restart my own practice. I also really enjoyed - and was relieved by! - the reiteration of how HARD Buddhism is, since it goes contrary to our evolutionary drives. This actually aligns with ANOTHER book I'm reading about anxiety disorder as NOT maladaptations, but just outdated good-adaptations, that were evolutionarily beneficial and are now, in this post-industrial age, a bit of a liability.

I would juxtapose this (and well, the New Yorker review juxtaposed these two books) against Stephen Batchelor's After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for the Secular Age. Both books dive deep into Buddhism with the clear hope of making it palatable to a post-Judeo-Christian Western skeptic. Batchelor does this by, IMHO, cherry-picking canon and assuming the best of any ambiguous phrase - but, hey, at least he TRIES to tackle the gnarlier stuff like reincarnation (waaaaht) and how women will doom the dharma (womp womp). Wright avoids the gnarlier stuff with a basic thesis of deep pragmatism: yo, just throw out the stuff that doesn't make sense! Meditation makes sense and is helpful! Here's science to prove it! I'm fine with either/both. In style, Batchelor's writing was - hoo boy - a ponderous slog, whereas Wright was fun and easy to read (without sacrificing depth).

Would I recommend this to a non-dharma friend? I'm not sure. I guess if someone was pretty keen on learning about Buddhism already, then, yes, this is a great intro. Take ye this and the Headspace app and go ye unto the mountain and, lo! I would probably not recommend the Batchelor book, since it's - well - kinda boring. If I wanted to slyly plant the seeds of Buddhism, I would do it the old-fashioned way: watching Keanu Reeves's oddly passable Indian accent (????) in Little Buddha.