The conscious self doesn’t create thoughtsIt receives them!

The human brain was designed – by natural selection – to mislead us, even enslave us:<ul><li>Evolutionary, animals that crave things that will help them survive & reproduce are better served by feeling satisfaction. A creature that continually needs to strive in order to satisfy its cravings is more likely to reproduce. Lasting happiness is not something that comes easily to human beings.</li><li>Natural selection has no inherent bias towards truth. We are prone to delusion and illusion. </li></ul>We are living in an unreal circle of unhappiness.

Evolution created minds that seek illusions

Buddhism is a philosophy and practice for seeing the world accurately. To notice the true nature of reality:<ol><li>Non-Self: Your consciousness is not a CEO in your brain, but more like the PR department. There is no atemporal you that is in control. The self is an illusion. </li><li>You can end suffering (dukka) by avoiding tahna – craving for the pleasant + avoidance of pain + tendency for delusion.</li><li>Impermanence: Nothing lasts forever! Therefore nothing can be grasped or held onto.</li></ol>

The 3 components of the Buddhist Solution

This theory conceives of the brain as possessing a variety of structures or networks which support specific functions: self-protection, enabled by a quick reaction to threats; mate attraction, enabled say through demonstrations of empathy or strength; mate retention; kin care; status-seeking, and so on.These modules continuously compete for the prize of conscious attention. But this competition takes place as a nonconscious level. So many of our impulsive reactions are nonconsciously generated.

The modular theory of the mind

“Liberation consists of changing the relationship between your consciousness and the things you normally think of as its ‘contents’ – your feelings, your thoughts, and so on. Once you realize that these things are ‘not-self’, the relationship of your consciousness to them becomes more like contemplation than engagement, and your consciousness is liberated”

Emotions can be regarded as automatic judgements about our environment. For instance, anger and fear promote defensive reactions (fight or flight in the face of a threat) to improve our chances of survival; lust fuels sexual activity; and pleasure provides positive reinforcement for evolutionary goals. But these reflex judgements are not always accurate. For instance, social justice movements the world over have struggled to bring our unconscious inferences about gender or otherness into conscious consideration,

Emotions from an evolutionary perspective

Philosophically explains how the human mind evolved to channel anxiety, depression, anger, and greed and how a healthy practice of Buddhist meditation can promote clarity and alleviate suffering.

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Philosophy

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Mindfulness

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Health

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Books

New York Times Bestseller 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.

ROBERT WRIGHT is the author of The Moral Animal, Nonzero, and Three Scientists and Their Gods. The New York Times selected The Moral Animal as one of the ten best books of the year and the other two as notable books of the year. Wright is a recipient of the National Magazine Award for Essay and Criticism and has been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. A contributing editor at The New Republic, he has also written for Time, Slate, The Atlantic Monthly, and The New Yorker. Wright has taught in the philosophy department at Princeton and the psychology department at the University of Pennsylvania, and is now a senior fellow at the New Ame