Why I'm Not a Buddhist | Evan Thompson
10% Happier with Dan Harris
10% Media, LLC
4.6 • 12.9K Ratings
🗓️ 9 February 2022
⏱️ 76 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This episode features Evan Thompson, author of the book Why I Am Not a Buddhist. Evan Thompson is a writer and professor of philosophy at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. His work and research focuses on the nature of the mind, the self, and human experience combining cognitive science, philosophy of mind, phenomenology, and cross-cultural philosophy, particularly Asian philosophical traditions.
This episode explores: Thompson's beef with what he calls "Buddhist exceptionalism," "Buddhist modernism," and "neural Buddhism;" why Buddhism is so attractive in the Western world; our culture's need for validation of meaning through science; McMindfulness and the Western obsession with individualism; the dialogue between science and Buddhism; what the Buddha meant by the word dukkha, or suffering; and Evan lays out his case for an alternative to Buddhist exceptionalism, which he calls "cosmopolitanism."
Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/evan-thompson-417
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is the 10% happier podcast. |
| 0:06.4 | I'm Dan Harris. |
| 0:08.4 | Hey, hey, the title of today's episode, I will admit, is a bit of a bait and switch. |
| 0:15.3 | We're calling the episode why I'm not a Buddhist, but personally, I do call myself a Buddhist. |
| 0:21.3 | We went with it because it happens to be the title of a recent book whose author you're |
| 0:25.5 | going to hear from today. |
| 0:27.5 | Before I introduce my guest, though, it's just a little bit of background here. |
| 0:30.2 | As a journalist and as a human, I deeply value skepticism to be clear, not nihilistic, |
| 0:36.6 | burn it all down cynicism, but instead a good nature challenging of ideas, both other |
| 0:41.8 | people's ideas and my own. |
| 0:44.1 | I don't espouse these beliefs just because I think being skeptical is the right or ethical |
| 0:49.5 | thing to do, although I do think it's right and ethical, but also because I think it's |
| 0:54.8 | the wisely selfish thing to do. |
| 0:57.2 | Life is better in my experience when you're not putting yourself through the subtle pain |
| 1:01.2 | of dogmatism, clinging to beliefs that you know somewhere in your psyche may not be fully |
| 1:07.2 | supportable. |
| 1:08.8 | Also life is more interesting when you open your mind to input from other people. |
| 1:13.4 | So today I'm going to try to walk the walk on this. |
| 1:15.0 | I invited on a guy named Evan Thompson who wrote the aforementioned book, why I'm not |
| 1:19.5 | a Buddhist. |
| 1:20.9 | The very title is challenging, given that I have long called myself a Buddhist. |
| 1:25.1 | In his book, Evan takes a hard run at people who have profoundly influenced my thinking, |
... |
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