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

為何佛教教義可被實現：透過科學及哲學發現佛教冥想與啟發的力量

透過心理學、哲學及大量的冥想，展現佛教如何掌握道德明確性與達到永久幸福的關鍵。暢銷書作者羅伯特‧萊特在《道德動物》一書中分享演化的過程如何形塑人類的大腦，而人類的心智仍是如此脆弱，總是遭受焦慮、憂鬱、憤怒及貪婪所苦，甚至無法讓幸福持續。萊特對於現代人所承受的痛苦有了答案，而答案早在一千多年前就被佛教所解答。佛教認為人類的苦痛皆來自無法透析世界，如果想透析苦難，唯有透過冥想的力量。本書萊特將帶領讀者一同透過心理學、哲學展示冥想的好處，這是第一本結合心理學、神經科學與佛教哲學的研究，剖析佛教教義是如何讓人們活的更快樂及安定。

From one of America’s greatest minds, a journey through psychology, philosophy, and lots of meditation to show 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 show how and why meditation can serve as the foundation for a spiritual life in a secular age. At once excitingly ambitious and wittily accessible, this is the first book to combine evolutionary psychology with cutting-edge neuroscience to defend the radical claims at the heart of Buddhist philosophy. With bracing honesty and fierce wisdom, it will persuade you not just that Buddhism is true—which is to say, a way out of our delusion—but that it can ultimately save us from ourselves, as individuals and as a species.