Why Buddhism Is True Book Summary

The movie The Matrix serves as an apt metaphor for the Buddhist concept of enlightenment. In the movie, the character Neo is given a choice - remain in his dream world (the Matrix) or take the red pill to "see how deep the rabbit hole goes" and wake up to reality, even if it is painful. Similarly, Buddhist meditation aims to pierce the veil of delusion and see the world as it really is, not as our minds distort it to be. Many Western Buddhists felt The Matrix captured their own transition from delusion to wisdom through meditation.

Section: 1, Chapter: 1

The default mode network refers to a network in the brain that is active when we're not focused on any particular task - when our mind is wandering. This often involves thoughts about the past, imagining future scenarios, or strategizing. Meditation, by focusing the attention on the breath or other object, aims to quiet the default mode network and keep us in the present moment rather than caught up in these mind wanderings. Brain scans show the default mode network is less active in experienced meditators.

Section: 1, Chapter: 2

Vipassana meditation, also known as insight meditation, aims to give the meditator insight into the true nature of reality, defined in Buddhism as the "three marks of existence":

1. Dukkha (suffering/unsatisfactoriness)
2. Anicca (impermanence)
3. Anatta (not-self)

By observing the contents of the mind with clarity, the meditator comes to see the pervasiveness of these three marks. In particular, anatta, the realization that there is no fixed, permanent self, is considered crucial for liberation from suffering but is very difficult to grasp intellectually without meditation practice.

Section: 1, Chapter: 2

From an evolutionary perspective, emotions evolved as a way to motivate animals, including humans, to approach things that helped them survive and reproduce (food, mates) and avoid things that threatened survival (predators, toxins). Good and bad feelings are nature's carrot and stick to control behavior.

However, in modern environments, these once-adaptive emotional propensities can lead us astray. For example:

• Our natural desire for sugar and fat, adaptive in ancestral environments, now leads to obesity and health issues
• Anger, useful for deterring rivals and cheaters in small hunter-gatherer bands, is counterproductive in modern anonymous societies
• Anxiety, which helped keep us alert to threats, now often arises in situations where it serves no productive purpose

Buddhism argues that mindfulness can help us step back from unhelpful, conditioned emotional patterns and see them with more clarity and choice in whether to act on them.

Section: 1, Chapter: 3

While intensely pleasurable meditative states known as jhanas can sometimes arise with concentration meditation, mindfulness meditation aims more for a clear seeing of reality that can permeate daily life off the cushion. This may involve:

• Greater presence and sensory vividness. Colors seem brighter, sounds more vivid, food more flavorful. There is a childlike freshness to perceptions.
• Reduced attachment and aversion. With a less self-referential perspective, there is less of a feeling of "what's in it for me" or "what does this mean about me" in response to experiences. Things can be appreciated for what they are.
• More openness to both pleasant and unpleasant feeling tones without getting caught up in narrative thoughts about them. Difficult emotions pass through more fluidly.
• Insights into the constructed, dreamlike nature of experience that create a sense of spaciousness and choice in how to respond.

While peak experiences on retreat may come and go, a more continuous "quiet joy" and intimacy with life can suffuse everyday experience with disciplined practice.

Section: 1, Chapter: 4

The Buddha's key teachings on not-self (anatta) are found in the Anatta-lakkhana Sutta. In it, he examines the five aggregates that constitute a person:

1. Form (the body)
2. Feeling
3. Perception
4. Mental formations
5. Consciousness

For each aggregate, he argues that if it were truly part of the self, one should be able to control it. But since we can't control these aggregates (e.g. the body ages and gets sick despite our wishes), they must be not-self. He instructs monks to contemplate each aggregate and realize "This is not mine, I am not this, this is not my self."

Section: 1, Chapter: 5

According to the modular model of the mind favored by modern evolutionary psychology, the mind is composed of many different sub-parts or "modules" that evolved to solve specific problems, like finding mates or avoiding predators.

However, there is no single "self" module that coordinates all the others - control of the mind is decentralized among them. Whichever modules are strongest in the moment direct our thoughts and behaviors. As author Robert Kurzban puts it, "we have every reason to believe that the brain is a confederation of modules, and that 'self' is not some all-powerful executive calling the shots."

This fits with the Buddhist idea of not-self - that the intuitive sense of being a singular, controlling self is actually an illusion. It arises because the module that "wins" and directs our present actions also weaves a plausible story to explain its actions to others. We then identify with and believe this story of self.

Section: 1, Chapter: 6

Competing mental modules may vie for control of consciousness by manipulating our affective states. For example:

• A module oriented towards short-term mating may active feelings of attraction and fantasies of sexual pleasure to motivate pursuit of a potential mate.
• A module focused on social status may generate feelings of self-satisfaction after a "win" or envy and resentment towards rivals.
• A module for avoiding pathogens may create feelings of disgust towards things that could carry disease.

We may not be consciously aware of this competition, but subtle shifts in feeling guide which modules are steering our thoughts and behaviors at any given time. Gaining insight into these dynamics is a key goal of mindfulness meditation in a Buddhist context.

Section: 1, Chapter: 7

Some Buddhists object to descriptions of meditative insight as revealing that "all is one," arguing this contradicts the core doctrine of emptiness (shunyata). If there are no truly existing, independent things, how can they be one?

But the author suggests this distinction may be more semantic than substantive. Emptiness points to the thorough interdependence (pratitya-samutpada) of all phenomena - how everything arises in dependence on everything else, lacking "inherent existence." And this radical interconnectedness could also be described as a deep unity or oneness.

Experientially, those who describe "becoming one with everything" in meditation seem to be pointing to the same basic insight - a falling away of the usual sense of separation between self and world, revealing a more intimate, less differentiated field of experience. The same basic realization may just be expressed through different metaphysical frameworks and vocabularies.

Section: 1, Chapter: 13

Living things often appear exquisitely designed for their environments and functions. For centuries, this was taken as evidence of a transcendent Creator.

But Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection provided an alternative explanation. Through random mutation and differential reproduction, life evolves adaptations over time that give the appearance of design. Given enough time and variation, this blind process can yield "organs of extreme perfection" like the eye.

Natural selection also applies to behavior. So our brains have been shaped by relentless evolutionary pressures to seek pleasure, avoid pain, pursue status, reproduce, and so on.

While wondrously complex, the productions of natural selection are not perfect or designed. They are kludges optimized for genetic propagation, not truth or wellbeing. When humans apply their naturally selected minds to physics or philosophy or the contemplative path, interesting distortions and biases can result.

Section: 1, Chapter: 15

While Buddhism and science are distinct traditions with different methods, the author argues they converge in presenting a model of reality at odds with our intuitive, everyday experience.

Science, for instance, tells us that tables and trees are mostly empty space - tiny particles held together by invisible forces, in constant motion and flux. Physics and neuroscience suggest that colors, sounds and other sensations don't exist "out there," but are constructions of the brain.

Similarly, Buddhist contemplatives report that on close examination, the seemingly solid, independent self dissolves into a flowing stream of sensations, thoughts and impressions, all "empty" of inherent existence. The world appears as a seamless, luminous display of interdependent appearances, like a rainbow or a mirage.

In both cases, penetrating beneath the surface of ordinary perception reveals a more subtle, fluid, insubstantial reality.

Section: 1, Chapter: 15