Buddhism is making an amazing claim. It's saying the reason we suffer and the reason we make other people suffer is because we don't see the world clearly.

So by clarifying your vision, you can become happier and you can become a better person, a more or only better person.

Hello and welcome to the Ezra Clancho on the Box Media podcast network, a place where you can find your podcasts.

This is a fun episode. It's actually an episode I've wanted you for a long time. It's sort of nicely off of the typical news and issues we sometimes cover here.

I've got Bob Wright on this week. He's the author of the new book Why Buddhism is true. He's also the author of a bunch of great books about science and religion. He is the rare author who is really at the intersection of those two topics.

He's written the evolution of God, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize non zero, which I cannot recommend enough. The moral animal three scientists and their gods and it keeps going on.

He's a co-founder and editor and chief of blogging heads dot TV is written for the New Yorker, the Atlantic, anybody you could think of. He also teaches at Princeton where he created the popular online course Buddhism and modern psychology.

I'm pretty interested in mindfulness meditation. You've heard me talk about it a bit on the podcast before. What I really liked about Bob's book and the reason I wanted to have a mon was it's not like most books on this topic.

It's not a simple how to meditate guide or why you should meditate guide. It is not about how meditating will reduce your stress level or make your cardiovascular health better.

We've got into a very life hacky space without conversation, which is useful. And if you do, if you meditate or want to meditate for that reason, great.

This book is really about theories of consciousness, about theories of how the mind interacts with the world about the ways in which pretty ancient Buddhist philosophies and insights about how we experience the world around us connect to more modern evolutionary psychology research and evidence about how we are built.

To experience the world around us. This is a book and in this case, a conversation that is about the illusions we have and what makes us unhappy and what helps us see the world in a clear sense. Some of that is mindfulness, but but as you'll hear us talk about in this podcast.

Some of it isn't and mindfulness is by no means a straight line or an easy way towards any of that. So we do talk about meditation. We talk about meditation retreats. I'm very interested in what it is like to do these 10 day or longer silent meditation retreats.

We talk about psychedelics and from ecology, we talk about theories of Buddhist philosophy. We talk about boundaries of the self and the ways in which that is created by evolutionary psychology and the way we experience the pain of animals and all kinds of things.

It is a fascinating and as I say, wide-ranging conversation. Bob is a super, super smart guy and a very clear explainer and very vivid storyteller. So I really enjoy talking to him about these issues. So without further ado, here's Bob Wright.

Bob Wright, welcome to the podcast. Well, thanks for having me, Ezra. Thank you for writing the book. I have read it. I really, really enjoyed it. I thought it was fantastic. That's wonderful to hear.

So given that so much of the book, so much of Buddhism and mindfulness itself insists on beginning with experience before you try to intellectualize it.

I thought I'd ask you about the experience first because I'm personally very interested in this. What is it 10 day meditation retreat like in detail? How does it feel your first or second time?

Okay, my first meditation retreat for the first two days felt horrible. I had never succeeded in meditating, although of course meditation teachers will tell you not supposed to think about success or talking those terms. But anyway, I'd never done what I considered succeeding.

So I, you know, I decided to go to boot camp and and do this was a one week silent meditation retreat.

Bootess camp.

Bootess camp. That's good. That's good. You should have written this book. This podcast is free everybody.

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