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Here’s a nice review of Robert Wright’s Why Buddhism is True by Adam Frank.
I haven’t read the book yet, but judging from the review it seems to take a more self-conscious about the selective appropriation of Buddhist contemplative traditions in ‘the West’ than is often the case.
To his credit, Wright is more than cognizant that exploring just these aspects of Buddhism means he is filtering out quite a bit of its history. As he reminds his readers:
“Two of the most common Western conceptions of Buddhism — that it’s atheistic and that it revolves around meditation — are wrong; most Asian Buddhists do believe in gods, though not an omnipotent creator God, and don’t meditate.”
Wright also acknowledges that even within this “scientific” Buddhism he is interested in, there are also enormous differences between various philosophical schools of thought, many with 1,000-year histories.
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