Buddhism and Modern Psychology

Buddhism and Modern Psychology

Instructor Robert Wright, Princeton University

About the Instructor

Robert Wright is Visiting Professor of Science and Religion at Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York. When he created this course in 2014, Wright was a visiting lecturer in Princeton University’s religion department and at the University’s Center for Human Values. He has also taught in the psychology department at Penn. He is the author, most recently, of The Evolution of God, which was a New York Times bestseller and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His other books include The Moral Animal: Evolutionary Psychology and Everyday Life, which The New York Times Book Review named one of the ten best books of 1994, and Nonzero, which Bill Clinton called “astonishing” and instructed White House staff members to read. In 2009 Wright was named by Foreign Policy magazine as one of the top 100 global thinkers. Wright has written for The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Foreign Policy, and the op-ed pages of The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Financial Times. His books have been translated into more than a dozen languages, and his awards include the National Magazine Award for Essay and Criticism. Wright is the editor-in-chief of the websites Bloggingheads.tv and MeaningofLife.tv.

On Buddhism:

Rupert Gethin, The Foundations of Buddhism

On mindfulness meditation:

• Bhante Henepola Gunaratana, Mindfulness in Plain English 
• Joseph Goldstein, The Experience of Insight

On evolutionary psychology:

The Moral Animal: Evolutionary Psychology and Everyday Life. The chapter of this that is included as part of the recommended reading, on the schedule below, is available to you for free—and I thank my publisher, Pantheon, for that.

On the modular view of the mind:

Robert Kurzban, Why Everyone (Else) Is a Hypocrite: Evolution and the Modular Mind

Week 1 The Buddhist Diagnosis

• Introduction: Religious Buddhism and ‘Secular’ Buddhism  11m
• Feelings and Illusions  12m
• The First Two Noble Truths  15m
• Evolutionary Psychology and the First Two Noble Truths  21m
• Office Hours 1  26m

Week 2 The Buddhist Prescription

• The Eightfold Path  13m
• Meditation  15m
• Mindfulness Meditation and the Brain  16m
• Can Our Feelings Be Trusted?  15m
• Office Hours 2  22m

Week 3 Does Your Self Exist?

• The Buddha’s Discourse on the Not-Self  16m
• What Did The Buddha Mean?  20m
• Modern Psychology and the Self  22m
• Office Hours 3  30m

Week 4 A New Model of the Mind

• Delusions about Ourselves21m
• What Mental Modules Aren’t8m
• What Mental Modules Are30m
• Office Hours 4  33m

Week 5 Mental Modules and Meditation

• Choosing ‘Selves’ Through Meditation  18m
• ‘Self’ Control  27m
• The Experience of Not-self  20m
• Office Hours 53  4m

Week 6 What is Enlightenment?

• Not-Self as Interconnection  23m
• Essentialism and Emptiness  28m
• Buddhist and Darwinian Enlightenment  31m
• A Naturalistic Religion?14m
• Office Hours 634m
• Extra Office Hours 142m
• Extra Office Hours 236m
• Extra Office Hours 341m

Week 1 The Buddhist Diagnosis

Video: Introduction: Religious Buddhism and ‘Secular’ Buddhism  11m

This course is about the scientific evaluation of Buddhist ideas. And reincarnation is just not an idea that's very susceptible to scientific evaluation. I don't know how you'd set up an experiment to kind of test the hypothesis of reincarnation.  we won't be talking much about things like Buddhist deities or reincarnation. Western Buddhism is that these people don't pay a lot of attention to what some people would call the supernatural. Parts of Buddhism.

naturalistic Buddhism: Now there are lots of ideas in Buddhism that are what you might call naturalistic. That is to say, they are susceptible to scientific evaluation. A lot of ideas about the human mind. So for example, Buddhism addresses questions like, why do people suffer? Why do we all feel anxiety? And sadness, and so on Why do people behave unkindly sometimes? Does the human mind deceive people about the nature of reality?And can we change the way the mind works? In particular, through meditation?

Now, I want to emphasize that this kind of naturalistic part of Buddhism is an authentic part of Buddhist heritage. It's found in the earliest writings. And it is common to Asian Buddhism and, and Western Buddhism. It's kind of a common denominator of Buddhisms. Now some people refer to this as a secular Buddhism, but that may be a little misleading.

Now, Buddhism does in a sense, say that there is an unseen order that we should adjust ourselves to. Now it's not talking about a kind of cosmic plan.The unseen order that is referred to, is the truth about the way things work. The truth about the structure of reality, the truth about human beings, even the truth about yourself. According to Buddhism, these truths often go unseen because the human mind contains certain built-in. distortions, illusions. We don't see the word clearly. And Buddhism certainly does assert that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves to this normally hidden truth. And in fact Buddhism lays a path for the harmonious adjustment.

Feelings and Illusions  12m

The First Two Noble Truths  15m

Evolutionary Psychology and the First Two Noble Truths  21m

Glossary:

denominations of Christianity

hungry ghost

equinimity:mental calmness, composure: